Mary Fraser
	PORT COCKBURN
Old Port Cockburn was 100 years old in 1972 , but there was scarcely anyone there to celebrate it.
One of the oldest communities on the Muskoka Lakes, Port Cockburn was -- until recent years — almost a ghost town. Once one of the busiest spots in the District, Port Cockburn is now dormant. Named in honour of A.P. Cockburn, the business entrepreneur who in the last century did more than any other man to get Muskoka on its feet, Port Cockburn has suffered the undeserved fate of becoming an almost forgotten place. No highway signs point it out. Few maps mark it. Today, only old-timers and antiquarians remember it.
Old Port Cockburn lies at the most northerly tip of Lake Joseph, in Huiaphrey Township (New Seguin), about 40 miles by boat from Gravenhurst and 18 miles by land from Parry Sound. It is 18 miles by boat from Port Sandfield and about 8 miles by land from Rosseau. It can be reached via the so-called "Clear Lake Road", either east from Highway 69 or south from Highway 532 (141). Little, however, survives today to give the visitor an idea of what it was like in its heyday,
The village was a direct by-product of the steamboat and colonization period in Muskoka. Prior to 1865, the head of Lake Joseph was just about the remotest place on earth. Scarcely a single white man had ever disturbed the stillness of its virgin pine-forests. But those were the days when the Canadian government was trying to create a "new frontier" for would-be farmers in the Precambrian Shield country, and, to make this potential "Eden" accessable, a number of "colonization roads" were being slashed through the bush. In 1865 -- when Bracebridge, Gravenhurst and Parry Sound were just barely on the map -- one such route, the Parry Sound Road, was declared open from Bracebridge to Parry Sound harbour. This road wandered to within three miles of the tip of Lake Joseph.
Still, there was little activity so far north for several more years, although it is said that an Englishman named Winnett built a small log cabin on the hill sloping down to Port Cockburn harbour, and settled there for two years -- before leaving to open a department store in Rochester, New York! The real stimuli leading to the emergence of Port Cockburn came in 1870 and 1871 respectively. A canal was then being cut to connect Lake Joseph with Lake Rosseau (at Port Sandfield), and the lock at Port Carling was also underway. Thanks to these improvements, a steamboat's whistle would soon be heard on Lake Joseph, Meanwhile , in 1870 the Government spent $477.50 to open a short road linking the Parry Sound Road with the head of Lake Joseph.
"The principal object in building it," explains the Crown
Lands Report of 1870. "is to afford accommodation to the settlers. . . to reach Lake Joseph, at a point where a wharf and landing can be formed for the steamers, which are expected to ply next season from Port Carling through and around Lake Joseph."