There was a time, once, when nearly every small town in Ontario was connected by trains. Those days are long gone now, but in the age of the automobile, these former rail lines now connect the communities of the City of Kawartha Lakes (a municipality in central Ontario of scattered towns, with no cities but plenty of lakes) in a different fashion.
The Kawartha section of the Trans-Canada Trail – or as locals know it, simply “the rail trail” – consists primarily of the former rail lines. Little besides the name remains of the railway legacy on the modern-day routes. Ties and tracks have been replaced by hard-packed limstone gravel, and dog walkers and cyclists quietly enjoy the scenery where steaming freight engines once thundered.Â
There are still places where the railway history is far more tangible, though, and the most spectacular of these is Doube’s Trestle Bridge. Built in 1883 to over the delightfully-named Buttermilk Creek and named for the Doube (pronounced “doob”) family who owned the land east of the valley, the bridge connected the Kawarthas to Peterborough some 45 kilometers to the east for nearly a hundred years. The bridge was originally made of wood and measured a whopping 457 meters long and 21 meters high, but embankments were added to the ends later, and the span was reduced to the 175-meter steel construction that still stands today.
Whether you go to take in vistas of spring greenery or fall colours, by foot, bike, or horseback, it’s worth stopping for a moment to appreciate the significance of the bridge in its day, and how it’s managed to remain a community landmark through the decades.
