History
Sioux Lookout and Hudson were both originally accessible only by rail and water when they were established as stops on the Grand Trunk Railway shortly after 1900; roads would not reach the remote area until 1920. The road connecting Sioux Lookout and Hudson with the Ignace–Dryden Road was initially under the upkeep of the Department of Northern Development. On April 1, 1937, that department was merged into the Department of Highways (DHO), after which the provincial highway network was expanded into northern Ontario.
Shortly after the merger, the DHO began to assume highways throughout northern Ontario. On October 6, 1937, Highway 72 was established, connecting Highway 17 with both Sioux Lookout and Hudson. On the 1938–39 Official Ontario Road Map, the distance from Dinorwic to Sioux Lookout is listed as 48.0 miles (77.2 km), and from Dinorwic to Hudson as 53.0 miles (85.3 km). This routing remained in place until at least 1953. By 1954, however, the branch leading to Hudson was renumbered as Highway 116. Highway 72 has, aside from minor realignments, remained unchanged since then.
Read more about this topic: Ontario Highway 72
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“... that there is no other way,
That the history of creation proceeds according to
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—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)