P7215

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Details

ID Number

P7215

Item Name

Image

Title

Railroad to Ojibway Town Site / Chemin de fer menant à Ojibway

Title (Fre)

Chemin de fer menant à Ojibway

Date

1916/12/04

Description

Black and white photograph looking east from Main Street to the proposed Ojibway town site; a grassy field, scattered with a few bare trees, is in the foreground of the photograph; a small footbridge is visible in the centre of the photograph, on the left side; railroad tracks are visible running horizontally through the centre of the photo and a large corpse of trees is visible behind the tracks; hand printed in the bottom left corner of the photograph is "Looking East from Main St. Showing Railroad to Town Site Dec. 4, 1916."

History

The Canadian Steel Corporation, a subsidiary of the United States Steel Company, purchased an 1800 acre site around 1917 and an elaborate town was planned to house workers at the plant. Roads were built and fire hydrants installed before the town itself was started and a four-lane divided highway separated the plant site from the town and connected it to Windsor, four kilometres away. The recession of the 1920s led the company to reassess the Canadian plant. Some mills were erected but the residential areas were never started. The depression of the 1930s finally killed the project, although the buildings which had been erected were used for war work in the 1940s. The town, which had been incorporated in 1913, remained a municipality although its population never exceded 100. It was annexed by Windsor in 1966, by which time natural regeneration had created a forest on the town site. Part of the site is now Windsor's nature park and the land planned for the Carnegie steel plant was developed for industry and is now known as the Morton Industrial Park. The residential area is now used by a harness racing complex, a new subdivision and the nature park.

Place made

Canada - Ontario - Ojibway

Collection Name

Museum Windsor

Subjects

Canadian Steel Corporation Ltd. / Société canadienne de l'acier Canadian Steel ltd.

City planning / Planification urbaine

Main St. / Rue Main

Meadows / Prairie

Ojibway (Ont.)

Progress photographs / Photographies Progress

Railroad tracks / Voie ferrée

Trees / Arbres