Bobcaygeon
Geography & Geology
Visitors to Bobcaygeon will notice the many layers of grey limestone rock and what looks like many rivers and islands. These limestone deposits were created by immense numbers of shelled creatures about 50 million years ago, when the entire area was covered by a sea. At that time the world had only three land masses, Indo-Africa, Brazil and Greenland. The latter has a shelf now known as the Canadian Shield, extending from west of Hudson Bay across the Atlantic to Scotland. This shield passes south of Kinmount running south-easterly through Nogies Creek, about 7 km north-east of the Village. As the land masses collided this area was raised and most of the land was laid dry.
Before the great ice ages, rivers and streams in the area ran north to south. About a million years ago during the ice ages, North America, as far south as Ohio, was covered with glaciers often a mile thick. Moraine deposits, formed by the southward-moving ice, changed river flows in a general easterly direction.
As the glaciers melted, an abundance of water flowed eastward along the the raging Algonquin River through Sturgeon Lake to Pigeon Lake. In Bobcaygeon there were then the Little Bob hill to the south and Rokeby hill to the north. As the water subsided, it left a series of lakes and connecting rivers flowing towards Lake Ontario through the Trent and Severn Valleys.
Today, the Bobcaygeon River, or as some maps call it, the Ottonabee River, swirls more tranquilly around the three islands of Bobcaygeon. It is controlled by dams and locks that maintain water levels and facilitate travel: both commercial (in earlier days) and, more recently, pleasure boat traffic. It is written that there are mysterious rivers flowing underground from lake to lake; this system supplied early settlers of the village with cool and potable water.
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Author: Melissa Panter
