Natural History
Products of Grey County's Forests
Trees - One of Our Best Assets
Grey County's magnificent stands of maple, beech, birch, ash and pine gave birth to a variety of wood based industries in the days of early settlement. Our trees have gone into everything from toothpicks to hardwood floors to wall panelling fit for a Duke! Furniture factories in Durham, Hanover and Owen Sound made Grey County a 19th century furniture capital of Canada.
Visit Grey Roots to learn more about the vast Grey County forests, and to hear more stories of how the 19th and 20th century settlers worked with this vast resource.
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Grey County's Farming Roots...
Like Pulling Teeth!
Once they had cleared their fields of trees, Grey County settlers faced another challenge in preparing the land for cultivation - glacial boulders far too big to be moved by men and horses alone!
The solution? A stone lifter. Primitive but powerful, stone lifters wrestled boulders out of their resting places all over Ontario for nearly 100 years.
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Waters of Grey
Water is Everywhere in Grey County!
We have scenic Georgian Bay shoreline, quiet inland lakes, picturesque waterfalls, and copious groundwater supplies. And we have rivers. Four of Ontario's largest rivers arise in Grey - the Nottawasaga, Saugeen, Grand, and Beaver Rivers. They make Grey County an important headwater region.
Grey County's six significant waterfalls are located where rivers and streams drop over the cliff face of the Niagara Escarpment. These falls provided water power for potential mills in the early settlement days. One of Grey's earliest mills was established at Inglis Falls, less than a kilometre from our Centre.
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The Rock of Grey County
Stone is never far away in Grey County...
Grey's good farmland is interspersed with outcrops of Niagara Escarpment rock. Our fields are dotted with granite boulders transported here by the glaciers. From Stoney Keppel to Rockford, stone has played an important role in Grey County's history. Stone quarrying is still an important local industry today.
Much of Canada's first Portland cement was made in Grey County. Beginning in the 1880s, factories at Owen Sound, Durham, Hanover and Shallow Lake made Grey the cement centre of Canada. Local clay makes local brick! In southern Ontario, red brick is more common east of the Niagara Escarpment, while the newer buff brick is more common to the west. Watch for this as you drive across the County.
