Gibson Street Bridge

Gibson Street Bridge. . Imagine the land as it was before 1794. The forestry, the vegetation, and the vast wilderness of the area we now know as Grimsby. The rock of the escarpment, with its creeks and falls. Inhabitants traveled through this area on footpaths, used on the journeys of the Indigenous peoples of the area and for the movements of the animals. The most prominent of the footpaths ran from "...the foot of the hill from Queenston, on the Niagara, to the Head of the Lake....later. [to be] called Queenston Stone Road...[eventually named] highway No. 8". Vehicles have replaced foot traffic. Many have traveled and journeyed along this pathway, observing the changing landscape and views of nature along the path. Oral tradition also records a footpath that followed "...the east bank [of the 40 Mile creek] from the lake to the Nelles Sawmill, which stood just east of the Upper Bridge..." , Several mills operated along Forty Mile creek between 1788 and 1920. At the top of the escarpment, John Green built the first sawmill in 1788. This property was subsequently purchased by John Beamer who constructed a new sawmill that the family operated for a couple of generations. At the base of the escarpment, the Nelles brothers built a sawmill on the Creek's east bank in 1792 and a grist and fulling mill on the west bank. The mills passed from the Nelles family in 1837 and were operated by various millers until they burnt in August 1876. A millstone from the Nelles mill marks the site adjacent to the upper bridge along the Mill path, later Gibson Street. , At the lower bridge on the creeks west side (Main St. West), John Green built a gristmill in 1789 and a second sawmill nearby. These mills were sold to the Crooks brothers in 1808. Crooks built an extensive flume system to power the grist mill. This mill operated until 1921 when Arthur Hewson converted it into a basket factory. The Hewson factory was one of Grimsby's prominent basket firms until it burnt in 1948. At the Forty Mile Creek Pond, brothers Peter Ball and John Adolphus Nelles constructed a dam and seasonally operated a sawmill prior to 1850. Mrs. Simcoe described the mills and the creek in her diary: , "...we walked through the village and beyond greens mill a little way up the mountain far enough to see where the stream dashes over very dark rocks, surrounded by hemlock spruce and other picturesque trees. A mile further is a mill and a small waterfall and, at a season when the water is higher, must be wonderfully fine." , The location of today's Gibson St. bridge was the site of the original "upper bridge", an 18th-century wooden structure that served the village as a link across the base of the escarpment over Forty Mile Creek between the mills. The bridge was rebuilt in 1865 for $15 and served into the 1900s. Modified as a wagon and automobile bridge in the early 1900s, it was replaced with a footbridge in 1985 and again in 2022. , Two quarries were located on the escarpment face in Grimsby; the Gibson Quarry (1866 - 1872) and the Grimsby Quarry works Co. (1890 - 1896) operated by the Webster family. These quarries produced red stone and limestone. , The first quarry was founded in 1866 by Robert Lille Gibon, a Scottish immigrant. Gibson accumulated 56 acres west of the creek and below "The Point", to quarry stone for bridge contracts with the Great Western Railway. A small gravity-operated tramway transported the stone through the village to the railway station. , Grimsby Quarry Works held an 18-acre site on the east side of the Forty Mile Creek gorge. It also used a narrow-gauge tram car system to ship stone down Mountain St and along a route to the pier at Maple Ave for shipment to Toronto where the stone was used in the cribs of Toronto's harbor entrance seawalls.