The oldest settlement north of the Kawartha Lakes is Coboconk. Its name is native in origin and has 2 possible sources: Quash-qua-be-conk meaning “where the gulls nest or Ko-ash-kob-o-cong loosely translated as “the part of the river where a portage needs to be made”. Take your pick! Coboconk grew up where the Gull River emptied into Balsam Lake . A small waterfall provided an excellent site for a sawmill and the village could be accessed by water from the south. The Coboconk Post Office was officially opened in October 1859. But in 1873, the village suffered an “identity crisis”. The arrival of the new railway in town (1872) had excited the locals. When the president of the railway company, John Shedden, died in a railway accident in Cannington, the devastated railway supporters changed the name of the village to Shedden in his honour. The name change met with substantial local disapproval. A standoff developed to the point where one side of the village used the old term, while the other side of the river was called Shedden. For 7 years confusion (and ill-feelings) reigned, until in 1880, the village returned to its original name of Coboconk.
By 1851, a sawmill & dam was under construction and it is no accident lumbering was Coboconk’s primary industry. The Gull River drained a huge area to the north & was a ma-jor “highway” for the lumber companies. Each spring & summer, countless thousands of sawlogs would pass through the village on their way to mills in Fenelon Falls , Bobcaygeon and even points further down the Kawartha Lakes such as Peterborough & Trenton . The arrival of the railway greatly enhanced the lumber industry. Coboconk was the only village on the entire Gull River system to have railway access. Why float your logs further south at great expense when lumber-men could access the railway at Coboconk? There were sawmills operating in the village until as recently as the 1970s.
Like many similar villages in the area, Coboconk was just a sleepy backwater until the arrival of the railway. Several influential businessmen had holdings in the area and they rightly reasoned a railway was a necessary step in advancing their business interests. Once such entrepreneur was William Gooderham, a flour miller & distillery baron in Toronto . Due to his efforts, the Toronto-Nipissing Rail-way was chartered in 1868. The first stage was the 68 miles between Scarborough Junction and the nascent little village of Coboconk on the Gull River . On November 26, 1872 the first steam train chugged into Coboconk village, making the village the boomtown for the back townships of Victoria County . But the Toronto-Nipissing Railway was based on Uxbridge & Toronto: far away from the county seat of Lindsay. Jealous and worried the wealth of its back townships would be siphoned off by rival towns outside the county, the good burgers of Lindsay reacted and built their own railway line: the Victoria Railway (which altered the history of Kinmount greatly!).
Coboconk also had some other “natural advantages”. The village is flanked by limestone ridges. Limestone is a useful mineral, especially in pioneer times when it was used as both a fertilizer and a building material. The rock, which can be easily broken, was burnt in large kilns and sold as slacked lime for gypsum wallboard and other uses. The massive lime kilns still stand by the river today, long disused, but grand symbols of a bygone age: a sort of Stonehenge for Coboconk.
