Travel Close to Home No. 4: Taking the Long View

In my latest installment of intrepid travels around my region of southwest Ontario, I paid a visit this morning to Long Point on the North Shore of Lake Erie.

Long Point is one of three or four areas along the north shore of Lake Erie which share similar features and formation, and related natural environments.  What makes Long Point unique, and justifies its status as a World Biosphere Reserve, is its sheer size.  Here's an aerial view.  Even from a plane, the main shore of the lake is visible only in the distance, since it is about 40 kilometres (25 miles) away.

Indeed, if Long Point stuck straight out, perpendicular to the shoreline, instead of at an acute angle towards the east, it would stretch well over half the distance across the lake and the tip would be some miles inside United States territorial waters.

What looks at first glance like a sizable land mass dissolves on closer inspection into a bit of sand and a lot of water.  The southern edge of Long Point is a sandspit, washed up here by the wave action of Lake Erie setting from southwest to northeast along the shoreline.  The remainder of the whole formation is primarily wetlands, full of marshland vegetation.  Only near the tip are there a few parallel sand dunes inland, which likely represent older shorelines of the spit.

Similar sandspit-and-marshland formations are found across Long Point Bay at Turkey Point, and farther southwest at Rondeau, Point Pelee, and Pelee Island.

In its natural state, before the arrival of European settlers in the region, Long Point was inaccessible by ground travel and had to be reached by water.  This gave rise, in the 1850s and 1860s, to the rapid growth of illegal and unsavoury activities on the Point -- everything from smuggling and illegal stills, to gambling and prostitution in what were then called (and still are called in Canadian law) "disorderly houses."  The perpretators and customers alike hailed from both sides of the lake, and the limited law enforcement activity in the region made it easy for them to carry on business.

Also, the natural environment of the Point was being rapidly depleted by unlimited and reckless over-fishing and over-hunting.  Then as now, Long Point's huge wetland areas made it a natural home and stopover point for vast flocks of water birds, and thus it became a popular shooting area.  But by 1855 it had become far too popular with hunters trying to satisfy demand from growing cities on both sides of the border.  In 1866, a group of dedicated sport hunters banded together to purchase 16 sectioned lots, the vast majority of the total land on the Point, and immediately they sought a charter as the Long Point Company.

The shareholders in the Company included some wealthy industrialists, and sufficient funds were set aside to hire full-time patrollers.  With that transfer of the Point from Crown to private ownership, the heyday of the illegal activites ended, and the hunting-for-profit likewise dried up in just a few years.  By 1871, the Company owned the entirety of Long Point aside from the section at the very tip, reserved by the federal government for the lighthouse.

What was truly remarkable about the Long Point Company was the determination of its owners, not to plunder the land, but to guard it and restore it to vitality as a living resource with a diverse animal, bird, and vegetation environment.  The members of the Company allowed themselves only such limited amounts of hunting as would not endanger or reduce the animal and bird populations, or endanger their survival. 

In the 1860s, such a mission was all but unheard-of among the white communities of North America, although it was an approach to land stewardship that was second nature to the aboriginal peoples.  The Long Point Company was truly at the vanguard of the natural environmental movement which was just beginning to stir.  The forerunner of Banff National Park wasn't established until 1885, almost twenty years later, and Canada's oldest provincial park, Algonquin Park in central Ontario, didn't come into existence until 1893. 

While the Company has come in for a fair bit of criticism for its iron rule over the years, there's no denying the success of their environmental stewardship of Long Point.  In later years, a substantial portion was returned to the province and re-entered the Crown lands portfolio.

This map shows the distribution of land in Long Point today, in broad outline:

Road access to the Point was created in the 1920s when the province purchased the land in area 3 of the map for a park, and built the causeway from Port Rowan across the marshy area of Big Creek.  The wetlands west of that road now form the Big Creek National Wildlife Area.  The lands sold by the province to private owners for cottages actually surround an enclave of provincial land which was the original Long Point Provincial Park.  Today, it still forms part of the Park, and is called the Cottonwood Campground.  The main Park tract, in area 3, contains a sizable day use area and further campgrounds named Firefly, Monarch, and Turtle Dunes.  All of these Park facilities face the sandy beach along the south side of the Point.

The outer half of the Point, apart from the lighthouse reserve at the tip, now forms the Long Point National Wildlife Area.

Long Point Company territory is still barred to non-members, so the road onto the Point ends with the Park campgrounds.  Access to the tip is only possible by boat.  A few small tracts of land are set aside from the Wildlife Area and hold a dozen or so private cottages, also accessible by boat.

Now, with all that background, here's my photo tour of Long Point and the Park.

Begin with the causeway.  It's narrow, with no shoulders, and for most of its length there is no barrier other than the grasses, shrubs, and the odd tree to stop careless motorists from plunging into the murky swamps on either side.

With wetlands on both sides, the causeway road is a natural place for turtles to be seen as they make their slow way from one marsh to the other.  The turtle death rate here through the years has been very high, and recent work has placed a number of culverts under the road to allow turtles to pass without leaving the water.  I assume it's working, since I saw no turtles on the road at all.

At the point where you arrive at the beach front, the road makes a sharp curve to the left to follow the shore, and a warning sign advises you that water over the road is possible.  Sure enough, there's the open water of Lake Erie just to your right, and it's not much lower than the road you're driving on.

The road continues east through the cottage area, so-called, although it's obvious that many of the cottages are now year-round homes.

As you arrive at the Provincial Park, you stop at the gatehouse to pay your park fee.  You then branch immediately off to the right into the parking areas for the day use beach -- and you quickly realize that this parking lot is better shielded from lake storms than the main road back by the causeway.

The access points to the beach are over lower parts of the dunes, and mats are laid over the sand to make walking easier -- as well as to facilitate access for people of reduced mobility.

You walk, then, up and over the critical spine of Long Point and down onto the sandy beach, and take a look.  The beach stretches as far as the eye can see in both directions, off past the park and the cottage area to your right...

...and off past the campgrounds to the Long Point Company's shoreline to your left -- on and on and on.  After all, the beach does extend for virtually the entire 40-kilometre length of Long Point!

One of the striking features of this beach is the layer of reddish-purple sand which is exposed just at and above the waterline.  We had a layer just like that at our summer cottage on Lake Simcoe, north of Toronto, when I was a young 'un.  The dark layer is coloured by tannins from decayed plant matter in bygone ages, and is a natural sight at beaches which adjoin wetlands.

As with so many of the sandy beaches along the northern shore of Lake Erie, the water here is nothing if not shallow.

The people who look like only their shoulders are above the water are actually sitting down!

If you look back at the aerial view at the top of this post, you'll be able to see just how far the sandy shallows extend offshore all around Long Point -- and you'll have a better idea of just why these waters have proven treacherous to so many ships during stormy weather through the years.  Actually, many of the shipwrecks came about through the practice of "blackbirding" in the old days, whereby local residents lured ships into destruction with fake lights, and then plundered the wrecks.

On the other hand, though, the water looks so placid and non-violent on a breezy summer's day that it's fun to just sit and contemplate the rolling rhythm of the waves, and the invisible American shore of Ohio and Pennsylvania that is the next solid land directly in front of you.

Proof positive of the bigger waves that roll up on this shore during more turbulent weather is provided by the assorted driftwood and other debris flung up onto the sand some distance above the water level.  The log in this picture is one of a number lying along the beach, long since denuded of their bark, but still maintaining their shape and integrity after long immersion in the lake.

The beach was actually pleasantly uncrowded, partly because of the morning hour, and partly because of the brisk westerly breeze along the shore, and consequent cool temperature.  I enjoyed a walk along the sands, and then a sit in the sun for a while.  I took a pass on swimming, largely because I hate having to wade out hundreds of metres just to get water deep enough to float in.

On the way home after my visit to Long Point, I detoured into Port Rowan, adjacent to the landward end of the causeway, and took a couple of pictures of the boathouses in (not on) the harbour.

I'm sure most of the boats kept in those boathouses have been out to the tip of Long Point, more than once.  The tip is a popular gathering place for boaters in the summer.  Here's an internet photo to show how the tip of the point would appear to you if you were to wade out along the sandbar extension, and then turn around and look back at the lighthouse.

The road to Long Point is County Road 59 (formerly provincial highway 59), and comes off Highway 401 at Woodstock.  If you're driving by that route, a helpful hint.  When you get to County Road 13, turn right on that one.  With a couple of small jogs, well signed, it takes you straight across country, avoiding the big eastward detour of 59 to serve the town of Delhi.  Road 13 rejoins Road 59 at the point where you cross the east-west provincial highway 3. 

Here, to conclude, is a map to give you an idea of the Point's location.