Commercial Archives | "Are We There Yet?" Highway-Based Tourism In Kawartha Lakes

Tourists Enjoy Branson’s Gallery in Rosedale

In 1952, the Lindsay Daily Post ran an editorial which urged every town or hamlet in the municipality to open a small museum or other roadside tourist attraction. […]

A Shell of its Former Self: What Comes Next for Coboconk’s Abandoned Shell Station?

Built not long after the Second World War, this abandoned two-storey wooden Shell gas station stood well into the first two decades of the twenty-first century. Operated by […]

Changing Times: Demolition of a Gas Station, Coboconk

At one time, Coboconk was home to half a dozen gas stations. Due to changes in technology and consolidation among oil companies from the 1970s onward, that number […]

Mealtime on Mitchell Lake: The Shallamar Diner

Famed aerial photographer Harry S. Oakman took this image of the Shallamar Diner around 1969. Operated by Ted and Wally Polomski in the late 1960s, Shallamar incorporated a […]

Stopping for Gas at the Club Balsam Snack Bar, Rosedale

The Club Balsam Snack Bar was located on the west side of Highway 35 in the village of Rosedale. With its log construction, the snack bar evoked the […]

Ready to Hit the Road Again With Full Stomachs, Courtesy of Kirkfield’s Alexander Restaurant

The Alexander Restaurant, pictured here in the mid-1950s, was located just west of downtown Kirkfield and served both locals and tourists making their way east and west along […]

Motorists Stop in Downtown Coboconk for a Bite to Eat at the Kawartha Tea Room & Restaurant

The Kawartha Tea Room catered to both locals and tourists travelling through Coboconk on Highway 35 in the 1950s. It sold full-course meals, cheeseburgers and hamburgers, soft drinks, […]

The Rosedale Motel

The Rosedale Motel was one of several motels which opened for business along Highway 35 North during the 1960s and 1970s. Others included the Mulberry House Motel north […]

The Kirkfield Inn: “One of the Finest Places of its Kind in Canada”

Funded by Margaret Mackenzie and opened in 1913, the Kirkfield Inn was praised as being “one of the finest places of its kind in Canada, and should prove […]

Coboconk’s Famous Pattie House

The Pattie House had been a fixture in downtown Coboconk for about half a century by the time this photograph was taken during the Great Depression. Apart from […]

Locals Gather at the Campbell House Hotel, Kirkfield

Until the Kirkfield Inn opened on the same site in 1913, the Campbell House Hotel enjoyed a commanding presence in downtown Kirkfield. Distinguished by dichromatic brickwork and symmetrical […]

Marg Valentine (née Moore) and Bill Simpson Wait for Motorists at Moore’s Service Station, Coboconk

Laurie Moore purchased Coboconk’s British-American service station from Harry Jackson in the 1920s. After Mr. Moore died in 1939, a family friend named Bill Simpson offered to help […]