Taking the road to Port Dalhousie, circa 1910
Our old photo this week offers a view of the road into Port Dalhousie as it looked early in the 20th century, perhaps about 1910.
A horse-drawn wagon comes into the village on the muddy, unpaved road, with vestiges of the decommissioned second Welland Canal to the left. The driver is heading his vehicle toward the swing bridge that for generations took village traffic across the old canal. Lock 1 of the second canal was located where that stand of trees is in the old photo, and immediately adjacent to it was the Customs House.
Beyond the bridge we can make out some buildings that are still at the heart of Port Dalhousie. Most notable is the building at the corner of Lock Street and Lockport Road, the building that for decades we knew as Murphy’s Restaurant. At the time this photo was taken that building housed Murphy and Scott’s ship chandlery, established there, across from the canal lock, in
1885 by grocer Edward Murphy to provide supplies for ships and crews passing through the canal.
That service would be carried on there by the Murphy family until 1950, when the Latcham brothers took it over and ran it for another two decades. It wasn’t until 1978 that Dr. Blake Harley established Murphy’s Restaurant on that same corner.
The channel on the left dates back to the days when the first and second Welland canals passed by there. That waterway has been filled in for decades now, replaced by Rennie Park. The commercial buildings that once stood there overlooking the channel were long ago replaced by the small strip mall that stands there today along Lakeport Road.
Further to the left, out of the photo, was the Muir Brothers dry dock. Once a thriving business in the village, the dry dock faded after the third Welland Canal closed and the new Welland Ship Canal opened in 1930, following a course that completely bypassed Port Dalhousie.
Out of sight to the right of the photographer was the factory building that since 1900 had housed Maple Leaf Rubber Co. In our time, until just a few years ago, it housed Lincoln Fabrics.
One humorous detail about this postcard photo was the result of the publishers of such cards feeling they could improve upon what the original photographic image had to offer. In this case, note the flagpole near the right edge of the photo. The original photo must have shown the pole with a blurry image of the flag flapping smartly in the breeze. The publisher decided to “improve” that by having one of his photo re-touchers replace the blurry original, whereupon the re-toucher delicately inked in the stars and stripes of an American flag … which makes no sense at all, flying outside the Customs House in Port Dalhousie.