{"id":23931,"date":"2019-06-05T20:09:38","date_gmt":"2019-06-06T00:09:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=23931"},"modified":"2019-06-13T14:11:57","modified_gmt":"2019-06-13T18:11:57","slug":"removing-remnants-of-century-old-sawmill-frees-stream-for-local-brook-trout-uncovers-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/removing-remnants-of-century-old-sawmill-frees-stream-for-local-brook-trout-uncovers-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Removing remnants of century-old sawmill frees stream for local brook trout, uncovers history"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For over a century,\npieces of our forgotten history were concealed just underfoot at Sheppard\u2019s\nBush, but recent efforts to replace a century-old concrete bridge have helped\nAurora uncover a piece of its heritage and improve the environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Tuesday, Mayor Tom\nMrakas was joined by members of the Lake Simcoe Conservation Authority and\nstudents from Aurora Grove Public School to help dedicate a new bridge along\nthe tributary of the East Holland River that flows through the popular\nconservation area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new bridge, built\nto accommodate both foot and vehicular traffic, replaced a concrete span over a\ncentury old, the last remnants of a sawmill that played a part in the early\nsettlement of Aurora.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe structure was\nover 100 years old and the Town did a structural integrity evaluation where an\nengineer did a review and basically said it was not safe for any vehicles to\ntravel over,\u201d says Brook Piotrowski, Restoration Project Manager for the LSRCA.\n\u201cMaintenance crews couldn\u2019t go over it because of how bad a condition the concrete\nwas. One of the big reasons for us at the Conservation Authority [to get\ninvolved] is this stream has brook trout and the existing structure was an\nobstruction for fish to migrate through that crossing. The water could get\nthrough but the fish could not. That was an issue for us as we need to remove\nas many barriers as possible to allow the brook trout and fish to migrate,\nspawn and do what they need to do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bridge\nreplacement was a partnership between the Town and the LSRCA, working with\ndifferent funding partners, including the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The prior bridge was\nvery tight and confined compared to today\u2019s standards and during a high rain\nevent, water would sometimes flow up on top and around the bridge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new bridge allows\nthe tributary to meander and flow as nature intended, with nothing impeding its\nflow, allowing the fish to flourish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The process to\nreplace the bridge, however, yielded some unexpected results. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe at the Authority\ntook the lead on doing an overall analysis of the site,\u201d says Mr. Piotrowski,\nnoting they hired geomorphologists to analyse the site, making sure the creek\ndidn\u2019t need to be realigned and what kind of footings the soil would require to\nensure the bridge would be stable and secure for vehicular and pedestrian\ntraffic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe found that in the\n1900s, there was a dam further built upstream and downstream of that dam, the\ncurrent location where the bridge is now, was a sawmill,\u201d he says. \u201cThey kind\nof funneled the waters through this one concrete opening for the water to go\nthrough quickly, and that velocity or increase in speed gave the power for a\nmill to spin the water wheel which then attached to saw blades. That was done\nin the early 1900s. Given that amount of \ntime, seeing ice, frost and tree roots going through it, the concrete\nstructure was in really, really bad shape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe neat thing about\nthis project is through that cultural report, we recognized some of the\nhistoric value to this. Working with the contractor to remove that structure\nand put more of an open span bridge, we actually carefully dismantled the old\nstructure and saved a lot of the pieces that still had some history to it.\nWhat\u2019s cool is there are saw blades that were poured in the wet concrete that\nare protruding out. New concrete today, to make it stronger, they put\nreinforcement bar in it. Back in the day they didn\u2019t have that, so they used\nwhatever they could find. In this case, the dull saw blades that were no longer\ngood for cutting wood, they actually put that in the concrete. Those saw blades\nhave been sitting in the concrete at this crossing for over 100 year.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Town, he says, is\ncurrently working on signage to be placed near some of the salvaged concrete to\nexplain the history of the site. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reconstructed bridge was dedicated last\nTuesday afternoon, May 28, the culmination of a day\u2019s worth of activities on\nsite, which included the planting of more than 200 native species of trees and\nshrubs around the bridge site by Aurora Grove Public School students, who\nbraved the rain to leave their mark on a hidden part of Aurora that now blends\nthe old with the new.<\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir For over a century, pieces of our forgotten history were concealed just underfoot at Sheppard\u2019s Bush, but recent efforts to replace a century-old concrete bridge have helped Aurora uncover a piece of its heritage and improve the environment. On Tuesday, Mayor Tom Mrakas was joined by members of the Lake Simcoe Conservation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":23924,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/2019-06-06-02.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6dZ","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-14 12:52:27","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23931\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}