Ragged Rapids (ghost town)

Ragged Rapids is a ghost community that was once a logging hamlet on the Black River Road east of Cooper(a)s Falls and west of Victoria Falls in the former Victoria County(a)s Dalton Township (now part of the City of Kawartha Lakes). It had a post office (run by Mrs. Addie Laidlaw) and a dance hall (until about the 1930s) and was formerly called (a)(a)Battlehall(a)(a) at one time according to one old Victoria County map. Today nothing remains. A lone farmstead (Laidlaw(a)s) had existed here since the turn of the century but was torn down as of 2009.

Ragged Rapids is located in the Queen Elizabeth II Wildlands Provincial Park near an actual rapids on the Black River of the same name. The Black River Road is a long and windy dirt road with potholes that fill up with a fair amount of rain water. The road is located so far back in the bush that it(a)s hard to imagine anyone (back before the days of cars) making a go of it.

One of its first settlers, Alfred Cooper, was related to the founder of Coopers Falls, Ontario, Thomas Cooper. Alfred was born in 1837 in Fawkham, England. He died in 1896 in Ragged Rapids and was buried in Coopers Falls. He was employed as a carman. He and his wife Eliza Fridd (1836-1909) emigrated to Canada on the SS Peruvian in 1884. She too died in Ragged Rapids and was buried in Coopers Falls. They had 10 children.

Its last postmistress was Mrs. Addie Laidlaw (south side of the road just east of where old Lewisham Rd comes down). Other families in the area who used this post office were: Hunter (east side of Victoria Falls down along the old Victoria Rd alignment), Camick (north side of road just west of the pond along the creek), Stein (just west of Laidlaw(a)s) and Quinn (well west of the hamlet where the big bend comes from the north and then heads east again).

The Cooper family also had a community called "Fawkham" SE of Washago named after them. (It has its own write-up under "Ramara" and is located at Hwy 169 and Switch Rd). Most of the Coopers emigrated from Fawkham, Kent, England.

To see a map of it go to this 1929 map. You can see how it was connected to Lewisham and Uphill back before the roads fell into disuse as they became reclaimed by the forest. You can see the lots and concessions marked clearly.
[url=http://maps.chass.utoronto.ca/cgi-bin/files.pl?idnum=1028]http://maps.chass.utoronto.ca/cgi-bin/files.pl?idnum=1028[/url] and another map here [url=http://maps.library.utoronto.ca/datapub/digital/G_3522_H9_250_1937a2.htm]http://maps.library.utoronto.ca/datapub/digital/G_3522_H9_250_1937a2.htm[/url]

According to friend, Gary Long, "re: Ragged Rapids and Victoria Road. Yes, I knew the Victoria Road ran north from Uphill and eventually to Vankoughet. As I understood it, the hamlet of Ragged Rapids existed to serve to local lumbering industry, and may have included a camp housing lumberman working in the woods in the area as well as those on log drives on the Black River. Some logs going down the Black no doubt went to the mill at Cooper(a)s Falls, but the majority of them were heading for Longford Mills, the mill at Severn Bridge, the mill at Port Severn, or other milling centres on southern Georgian Bay, depending on the time period (by the way, have you hiked into Ragged Rapids itself?--quite a spectacular rocky gorge. There must have been bad log jams in there."

Concession and Lot Owners in Ragged Rapids

A Cooper- Conc 11, lot 11
Art Cooper- Conc 12, lot 9
Hunter- Conc 12, lot 1
Stein- Conc 11, lot 10
Laidlaw- Conc 11, lot 9
Quinn- Conc 11, lot 13
R Camick- Conc 12, lot 7 (in 1908) and Conc 11, lot 6 (in 1916)
S Camick- Conc 11, lot 7