Latchford, Ontario

A Short Rail History

By Rob Godby

In the parlance of the railway, communities might be categorized into two types: destinations or way stations. Of course, all settlements are actually a balance of these two qualities and a kind of geographic, economic, political and social calculus determines whether a place will be of the former or latter type, but for those people whose lives and futures are involved in a town’s making and maintenance, fate is the ultimate determinant of their destiny. Latchford, Ontario is no different from any other place on these counts, and fate and coincidence have played more than a few unexpected tricks in determining its history. Histories of northern Ontario settlement rarely mention the little town, even though its Tri-Town neighbours to the north often merit chapters in such memoirs, but such slights overlook the importance this small town once played in the early development of “New Ontario”. Located on the Montreal River and bounded to the west by the shining waters of Bay Lake, and to the east by the outflow of the river, Latchford was referred to by native people as “Que Che Cheng,” an Ojibwa phrase meaning “the outlet”. If it is noticed at all, travelers today usually remember the town for the unique arched-steel highway bridge that now allows Highway 11 to cross the river. The more observant might also recall a control dam to the west of this bridge, although few will realize that this dam once used to carry the highway over the river. More likely they will notice a three-span truss bridge crossing the river to the east that allows a railway to run next to the road south of the village. These tracks are those of the Ontario Northland Railway, and Latchford owes its existence to the building of this line.

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Latchford Station.
Built in 1905 and closed in 1966. Photo: Latchford House of Memories,
Frank Vollhardt Jr. Collection.

The original Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway (as it was called until 1946) survey of 1903 notes that crossing the river at this site allowed the easiest grades to be incorporated in the building of a rail-link between North Bay and the waters of Lake Temiskaming, another 20 miles to the north. The survey also reported that, in addition to these operational advantages, crossing here allowed access to a vast timber area via the Montreal River, while the outlet of Bay Lake offered good hydro-electric generating potential and the waters of Bay Lake and the Montreal were navigable for another 40 miles beyond this point. The conjunction of all these factors suggested an optimistic outlook for any settlement located here, and led the T&N.O. to survey a townsite on the north side of the crossing at Milepost 94. The original name of this townsite was “Montreal River Station”.

By 1904, rails had reached the townsite. This was not an insignificant feat, requiring the largest and costliest single construction to date by the road, the 375-foot railway bridge over the Montreal River that is still in use today. The three 125-foot steel truss spans, manufactured by the Dominion Bridge Company of Montreal, cost $19,815 and were installed by August 1904. In the same year, the railway contracted the firm of O’Boyle and O’Boyle of Sault Ste. Marie to furnish the townsite with an enclosed water tank and station by 1905 at a combined cost of $4475. The station was built to the railway’s Plan #5 specification, one also used for the original Cobalt and Widdifield depots, and was of a character unique to the ONR, incorporating a hip roof and a single dormer window over the bay window on the platform. In 1905, the first of the nearly five hundred 66-foot by 132-foot lots comprising the planned town were sold. The new village’s name was also changed to “Latchford” in honour of the Minister of Public Works for the Province of Ontario. Frank Latchford had been a vocal proponent of the railway and turned the first sod in North Bay when tracklaying began in 1902. Since the town’s existence was in no small part due to his efforts, the tribute apparently stirred little controversy. The T&N.O.’s 1905 Annual Report indicates the optimism management had for the town’s success, as lot sales earned the railroad $11,400. This optimism was no doubt influenced by the discovery of silver at Cobalt, the next town “up the line”, where lot sales earned the railway $34,600. Twenty miles south, the railway was also doing brisk land business, earning another $2000 from lots sold in Temagami and further bolstering Latchford’s positive outlook. With an additional 194 lot sales in 1906 at a value of $14,203, Latchford’s future seemed assured.

1905-1913: “The Best of Times…”

In 1905, Latchford’s economic future seemed bright, as it became the second busiest stop on the T&N.O. line when the railway’s first patrons began to steam into town. Some continued on to Cobalt while others set out on the Montreal river to prospect, but all provided incomes to the many merchants and outfitters now setting up shop along its muddy main street.

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Latchford- 1906. Note the freight-house was moved from the north to
south end of the station in 1908, and an icehouse was built north of the station.

Anticipation of the business the little town would generate led to further railway construction at the station grounds: a 30x40-foot freight house and coaling bin in 1905, station agent and section houses in 1906, a 300 foot platform extension to the water tank, the installation of a 100-ton scale and a freight-shed addition in 1907. As was suggested in the original surveys, Latchford seemed destined to be driven by its function as a crossroads, but its forestry potential and the building of two new sawmills would also influence the future of the town. The larger of the two, the Empire Company sawmill, was located on the Montreal River to the east of the station grounds and served by 3658 feet of siding, the longest on the railway. Its logs came from substantial timber limits in the area granted by provincial Liberal government of the time. The second mill, Salmon Brother's, was located on a spit of land protruding into Bay Lake just south of the railway bridge on an 803-foot siding.

The 1906 Annual Report indicates the Empire Mill was busy enough to remain open all year round, with the majority of its wood being shipped to Cobalt where the mining boom was in full swing. Empire’s logs came from Lake Temiskaming, with horse teams dragging them about a mile from the lakeshore to the Haileybury station for shipment to Latchford. At the Empire Mill’s request, the T&N.O. soon commenced construction of a wharf on the lake and connecting spur to increase the volume of logs that could be shipped to the mill. In addition to the lumber traffic, Latchford provided a major miner’s supply point for distribution up to 25 miles away. Prospectors’ ore stakings engendered optimism too, with the expectation of heavy ore tonnage from the town within the next year. In preparation for these additional freight demands, the railway further improved town access to its land and grounds, leveling the area and installing an unloading siding south of the station.

More freight activity was occurring just south of the river crossing. At mile 92.5, the T&N.O. served the Gillies Bros. spur to their logging camp on Bay Lake. At mile 93.25 another spur served the Booth and Son’s dock and warehouse operations, while a quarter mile past this the Empire Lumber Company had a log spur to collect logs coming down the Montreal River into Bay Lake. Immediately before the railway bridge, a wye served the Salmon and Son sawmill and allowed locomotives to turn at Latchford.

Passenger revenues in Latchford were also fattening the T&N.O.’s bottom line, as through trains brought more settlers, prospectors and businessman. There were no less than eight trains serving the town by 1906, with Trains 1, 2, 5 and 6 offering first-class through service, 3 and 4 running mail/express, and trains 7 and 8 providing a local service. These “Latchford Locals” utilized four second-class coaches coupled behind north and southbound freights, and established commuter service between Latchford and New Liskeard in the summer of 1906. This allowed residents of Latchford to work jobs up the line, particularly in the mines of Cobalt and Annual Reports suggest these trains were “well patronized…” This description was somewhat misleading if it was read to presume that the local service was happily patronized by the people who used it, as trains were usually filled to capacity and track conditions often caused those standing to fall on the hapless passengers seated below them on the hard wooden seating the coaches provided. To add to these frustrations, the posted schedule was rarely met and this train earned the T&N.O. the nickname “Time No Object” with its unpredictable service.

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Waiting for the Train. T&N.O. 114 arrives in Latchford around 1907.
Photo: Frank Vollhardt Jr. Collection.

Although a devastating fire burned the entire business district of Latchford in April 1907, the town rebuilt almost immediately and incorporated on July 15^th, 1907, having become the centre of an entire rail and water transportation network. The town’s importance in this regard was underlined when plans for at least three electric railways were unveiled that planned to connect Latchford to various points, including Temagami, Cobalt and Elk Lake. Though none of these plans ever came to fruition, they underline how Latchford was considered an important centre in the settlement of the region.

At its peak, the town’s station required 27 employees and operated around the clock to manage the volume of passenger traffic arriving daily. While the permanent population of the town never seemed to exceed more than about 600 people, the large number of travelers passing through Latchford swelled the town’s population into the thousands every summer. Although the railway allowed easy access to the Cobalt area, the area of Elk Lake and Gowganda, located on the Montreal River to the north, was inaccessible except by boat, and the majority of the 10,000 prospectors and miners active in that area were arriving due to the steamboat services Latchford provided. In the summer of 1907, Booth & Son’s, part of J.R. Booth’s northeastern Ontario logging empire, had two steamboats shipped in by rail to complement their lake operations. This increased the number of steamship companies to three in Latchford, as these boats supplemented services offered by the Montreal River Navigation Company, the Latchford Boat Line, and the Upper Ontario Steamboat Company, all providing service on the Montreal River above and below Bay Lake. By 1908, yet another steamboat company, the Richardson Navigation Company had also organized, and all of these firms and indeed, the entire town benefited from the prospecting and mining activity occurring throughout the region. This state of affairs continued until February 1913 when the T&N.O. opened its Elk-Lake branch. This line spelled the demise of Latchford and its steamship operations in the area as the town’s importance as a regional crossroads had been ended by the construction of the railroad by-pass.

The following year also saw the demise of the other economic engine of the community, the Empire Mill. The operation had grown to comprise a steam-powered sawmill, an electric planing mill and a drying kiln, and was capable of producing 50,000 board feet of lumber per shift, high by lumbering standards even fifty years later. To switch the three lumber spurs, lath spur and planing mill spurs, the company owned two shunters, the records of which occasionally appear in the early T&N.O. Annual Reports when the railway was contracted to repair them. Politics, however, are said to have shut down the mill.

Conservative victories in federal and provincial elections of 1911 meant political favours would be granted to some, while others would experience retribution for past associations with the opposition Liberals. The outcome of these machinations found the Empire Mill without timber rights. The mill stood for three years without cutting a single board before its owners finally succumbed to the inevitable, and on February 9^th, 1914 turned over the Haileybury wharf to the T&N.O. Commission. The mill was then dismantled in 1915, with a number of the buildings ending up in use in North Bay at the T&N.O.’s coach shops.

1914-1960: Sawdust City

Although it seemed the world no longer wished to beat a path through town, Latchford carried on. While the passing of time and the accomplishment of many communities in this region would be measured by ore tailings, Latchford’s would be measured by sawdust. Despite the setback of the Empire Mill’s closing, “Sawdust City” had begun to flourish as a lumbering community. The Hammermill Pulp Company opened in 1909 on the opposite side of the same point on Bay Lake that Salmon Brother's occupied. This rossing (de-barking) plant would become the Canadian Pulp and Lumber Company and expand to handle 30 carloads of logs per day. Salmon Brother's became J.J. McNeil’s in 1913, then Auld Lumber Company in 1917 and finally became P.J. Grant’s mill in 1920. Across the water on the north side of the river and just to the northwest of the dam-site, a new mill owned by Donald McLellan opened in 1917. This mill would stand for another forty-three years though its name would change to A.B. Gordon’s. Additionally, in 1916 the A.J. Murphy Company began to rebuild the Empire Mill site, utilizing the shells of the remaining buildings. Re-opening in 1917, the new mill’s owners planned to use remaining timber limits near Elk Lake and accessible by the Montreal River to provide their raw material. The new operation would take advantage of the river in a way the Empire Company had not, floating logs downriver and through Bay Lake to avoid transport costs on the T&N.O. The railway would be used only to ship the mill’s newly cut boards to market, greatly reducing operating costs. Latchford would continue to sustain at least three busy sawmills until the 1940’s. Grant’s mill would burn in 1930, but would rebuild on the other side of the original spurs where the Canadian Pulp and Lumber site had been, this mill having closed in the 1920’s.

Latchford would remain a frontier town in many ways throughout the first half of the twentieth century. Electricity would arrive in 1949, simplifying the approximately 500 resident’s lives considerably, and allowing them to enjoy what most in the country had enjoyed for over 30 years. The Ferguson Highway, later known as Highway 11, established the first road-link to the town from the south in 1926. The locations of the Booth Lumber camp, closed in the early 1920’s, and the Gillies camp, which had closed in the 1930’s, would both become the sites of tourist camps with the arrival of the new road. The remoteness of the area, however, was evident to anyone who traveled this new route. Motorists were required to stop at checkpoints in North Bay and Latchford to allow the absence of those stranded by breakdowns to be noted. The north-country was still a potentially dangerous place.

The arrival of the highway signified the beginning of the end of the T&N.O.’s dominance in the region, with buses, cars and trucks eroding rail revenues. Passenger and freight traffic slowly fell along the route, even though population and affluence in Canada was increasing, and the rate of this traffic decline accelerated as the 1930’s and 1940’s gave way to the post-war years. A name change to the more “progressive” Ontario Northland Railway (ONR) did little to stem the inevitable. The station area remained busy for a time, with as many as seven passenger trains arriving during the war years, but after the war rail travel began to decline. By the end of the 1950’s only two trains served Latchford in each direction, one on a flag-stop basis only.

By this time, each of the camps and mills south of the town had also closed and the ONR served Latchford only on the north side of the Montreal River. Here, three tracks passed the station and water tank: the ONR mainline, a passing siding, and a third siding used to hold and weigh outgoing loads. Additionally there were two business spurs, one to each of the sawmills still in operation. Murphy’s, located east of the station on the Montreal River was served by a single siding that allowed lumber to be transferred to waiting boxcars. Loaded cars would then be moved to the scale and then lined up further along this siding to be picked up by a local freight.

More interesting operations were used to serve the A.B. Gordon mill. Just south of the station, a spur branched toward the southwest, running in a graceful curve toward the Bay Lake mill just north of the town’s control dam. This mill siding was 1400 feet long, however, the portion of this length beyond a switch used to reach the mill’s storage yards was constructed of 40 lb rail. This forced the ONR to drop cars on the spur just off the mainline, where they would be fetched by the “Dinky,” a small diesel powered switcher owned by Gordon’s. This wood-sheathed box-cab had begun life serving a mill in Severn Bridge, and had later been brought to Latchford. Along with the small locomotive arrived it’s engineer and a local joke described the situation- “if you bought the Dinky, you bought George Shaw.”

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The Dinky. This shunter was usually piloted by George Shaw, and hauled
the A.B. Gordon Mill’s lumber to its lumber piles, and shunted boxcars to
these yards for loading. Photo: Frank Vollhardt Jr. Collection.

The Dinky was used to shunt waiting boxcars to one of two lumberyards located on the east side of Highway 11 for loading. Many people still remember having to stop and wait while the Dinky crossed the highway with a load. Once loaded, the boxcars would then be transferred back to the drop-track for pick-up by a local freight. A switchback ran north and parallel to the highway to service the southernmost lumber-piles located on a rise just beyond where the road crossed the “Dinky track”. The northern piles were about three blocks further on. The Dinky also shunted the “high-cars” used to transfer cut lumber from the mill to the yards. These distinctive cars featured a raised deck, allowing the cars to be loaded from the mill’s board-way, which was about eight feet above the ground.

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Latchford- 1956. Fourth St. is now Highway 11, which used
the control dam built in 1912 to cross the Montreal River.

On one memorable occasion in 1955, the Dinky was towing two boxcars into the lumberyards when disaster struck. An ONR boxcar directly behind the switcher appears to have derailed, possibly on a switch or due to a turned rail. While this car ground to a halt and tipped over as it dug into earth, the end boxcar became uncoupled but remained on the track, allowing it to begin rolling down the hill it had just come up. The boxcar continued to gain speed as it accelerated down the incline and around the curve towards Gordon’s Mill. Out of control, it crossed the highway without incident, reached the end of the track at one of the mill’s eastern walls, crashing through the wood-frame building and far wall. The boxcar finally came to rest with one end in Bay Lake, while the other was suspended some 10 above by the mill’s floor. Here it remained until a crew was finally able to pull it back through the mill and onto dry land.

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Runaway Boxcar. In the summer of 1955, this boxcar “got away” on the
Dinky track, rolling through a building at A.B. Gordon’s Mill before falling
into Bay Lake. Photo: Sheila Godby

In many ways, the last steam run by the ONR’s Pacific #701 on June 25^th, 1957 foreshadowed the end of the association with rail Latchford had enjoyed since its beginning. Although hundreds of thousands of passengers had passed through the station, and millions of board feet of lumber had been shipped north and south, within two years only a few passengers would account for all of the rail traffic Latchford would contribute to the railway. Sawdust City’s days were numbered. The beginning of the end occurred later in 1957, when Murphy’s mill burned to the ground. Although it rebuilt on a new site on Bay Lake, lumber would now be shipped by truck. By 1959, Gordon’s Mill stood idle, a victim of the recession of the late 1950’s. The Dinky, along with the rest of the Gordon Mill assets were sold to the Milne Lumber Company in Temagami, where the Dinky continued in service for another few years. When the Latchford station was closed in 1966 and torn down a short time later, the town turned its back on the railway. Passenger service would live on until the mid-1970’s on a flag stop basis, but the relationship of the railway and the town it had created was effectively severed.

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Last Steam in Latchford. ONR 701 arrives in Latchford on June 25, 1957.
Photo: Sheila Godby.

Today the town faces the highway, not the tracks. The same geographic benefits that convinced the T&N.O. that Latchford should become a town are being used today to foster an economic recovery of sorts. The population has dwindled to 300, and little remains of the busy main street that once served hopeful prospectors and settlers at the turn of the century, but the town is otherwise experiencing a small revival of fortune. Through publicizing its lakefront potential, new residents have begun to arrive to take advantage of the beauty of Bay Lake, and the dream of hydroelectric power from the dam at Bay Lake may finally become a reality after 90 years of planning. The town strives to remember its lumbering past, but little attention is paid to the once important railway. Only the former station-agent’s house and the mournful whistle of the increasingly infrequent ONR trains crossing the Montreal River bridge remain to remind those who care to notice of this chapter in the town’s past. This turnaround may be fair-play as the town still remembers how the opening of the Elk Lake branch in 1913 effectively ended any hope of the town becoming a major centre in the north. But for this twist of fate, who knows what might have been.

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Latchford Bridge. As seen from the south today, this bridge remains unchanged
since it was built in 1904 by the T&N.O. Photo: Author.

Modeling Latchford

Latchford could provide an interesting project for any ONR modeler. Those interested in the early years of the T&N.O., including the Cobalt silver boom, might consider including Latchford in their trackplans. In addition to the unique bridge, well recognized by railfans, the town’s Empire Mill operation and those of the mills and camps south of town would add interesting operating possibilities. The Booth camp’s steamboat operations, shipping both goods and passengers north to Gowganda and Elk Lake offer unique marine modeling and research challenges. South of the town, a local freight could switch the spurs the Gillies and Booth camps as well as the Salmon Brother's and Canadian Pulp and Lumber mills. Passenger service could include the Latchford Local coaches coupled to the rear of northbound freights. Latchford’s station, platform and enclosed water, as well as a background of a muddy frontier main street would also add visual interest to any layout, while the Empire Mill spurs could be switched by small steam-powered switchers. Such possibilities could be incorporated in two or three modules with some selective compression as the linear arrangement of the town would lend itself to such a design,. More detail could be included in a larger setting.

Transition era modelers might consider Latchford in the early 1950’s. Again, the bridge would provide a focal point to the scene, while the station grounds, and Murphy’s Mill, its siding and lumberyards would provide an interesting counterpoint. Gordon’s Mill and the Dinky operations would provide further operational possibilities as a simple scratchbuilding project could provide the unique locomotive to work the extensive lumberyards lining a 1950’s highway scene, complete with filling-station, churches and a small hotel. Selective compression would again be required to include these possibilities, but the interesting scene would be an exciting addition to any layout, or an interesting standalone display. Operation would include local freights dropping off empty boxcars for loading at both mills, and picking up loaded cars for delivery elsewhere.

The Dinky’s operations could be modeled, including the Gordon Mill operation utilizing high cars to move lumber from the mills to the lumber-piles. Passenger service would also run through, with trains appropriate for the era modeled. Again, portraying the town in this time-period could be accomplished using modules, but might be better suited for a larger or deeper space, possibly a corner to capture the fact that traffic came from both the Montreal River to the east and Bay Lake to the west.

Modeling Latchford

Further Reading