History
This was the first European settlement west of Lake Superior; it was established by French Canadian Pierre Gaultier de Varennes et de La Vérendrye, first commander of the western district. In 1731 he built Fort St. Pierre near this spot as support for the fur trade with native peoples. In 1732 his expedition built Fort St. Charles on Magnuson Island on the west side of Lake of the Woods. After some time, Fort St. Pierre fell out of use.
In 1817, following the War of 1812 and redefinition of borders between Canada and the United States, the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) built a fort here. Officials named the subsequent settlement after Lady Frances Simpson, wife of then Hudson's Bay Company Governor George Simpson, who visited the fort many times.
Incorporated in 1903, the town held a big centennial celebration in 2003.
The main employer is a pulp and paper mill established in the early 1900s. It has had numerous owners over the years, notably Edward Wellington Backus. Now owned by Resolute Forest Products, the mill employs about 700 persons.
On June 25, 1946, the town was struck by a tornado which caused major damage. This tornado struck a week after the deadly Windsor tornado.
Read more about this topic: Fort Frances
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“A great proportion of the inhabitants of the Cape are always thus abroad about their teaming on some ocean highway or other, and the history of one of their ordinary trips would cast the Argonautic expedition into the shade.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“What has history to do with me? Mine is the first and only world! I want to report how I find the world. What others have told me about the world is a very small and incidental part of my experience. I have to judge the world, to measure things.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)
“All history attests that man has subjected woman to his will, used her as a means to promote his selfish gratification, to minister to his sensual pleasures, to be instrumental in promoting his comfort; but never has he desired to elevate her to that rank she was created to fill. He has done all he could to debase and enslave her mind; and now he looks triumphantly on the ruin he has wrought, and say, the being he has thus deeply injured is his inferior.”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)