History
Perry Township was opened to settlement in 1873 and the first two Post Offices in the township were established at Scotia and Emsdale, on the Muskoka Road. In 1879, in the north-east corner of the township, settlers Arthur J. O'Neil and his partner William Kearney opened a store on the 12th Concession, near what is now Cherry Hill Road, (west of Beaver Lake). In the following year a post office was opened in "Kearney's Store" and inherited the name. In those days the closest railway was the Northern at Gravenhurst from which all supplies were brought up the Muskoka Road.
Kearney prospered as a logging town with many sawmills and lumber camps. The logs were floated down the Magnetawan River, some as far as Byng Inlet.
With the arrival of the Ottawa, Arnprior and Parry Sound Railway in 1895, a siding was built at the foot of what was known as Long Lake (now Perry Lake). The commerce of the village shifted to the east side of the lake, near the railway station, where logs would be loaded onto the train after only a few days drive. In 1908, Kearney separated from the township of Perry, and it was incorporated as a town. The original parcel of land included 600 acres (2.4 km²).
The Ottawa, Arnprior and Parry Sound Railway was absorbed into the Canada Atlantic Railway, which was sold to the Grand Trunk Railway in 1905. In 1923 the Grand Trunk became part of the Canadian National Railways. The track from Kearney into Algonquin Park was abandoned in 1959. The rail bed was converted into a road to allow continued access to the now ghost towns of Ryan and Ravensworth, and Rain Lake in Algonquin Park. Sections of the original frontier roads around Ryan and Ravensworth now serve as snow-mobile trails, while others have been completely abandoned and allowed to grow wild.
Through the 1970s Kearney claimed to be "The Smallest Town in Ontario." On December 1, 1979, legislation was passed to amalgamate the town of Kearney, with the geographic townships of Proudfoot and Bethune, as well as the portions of Butt and McCraney townships in Nipissing District that were not part of Algonquin Provincial Park.
Read more about this topic: Kearney, Ontario
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