User:Alaney2k/Don Valley

The Don Valley is a historic river valley in Toronto, Canada. The valley, a former glacial spillway, which was also partly submerged under a post-Ice Age lake, is the largest watershed in Toronto and the surrounding region. The Don River empties into Toronto Harbour, and Toronto itself was founded next to the Don River.

History
The natural geography of the Don River valley dates from the end of the Ice Age 12,500 years ago. The melting ice created Lake Iroquois, a lake much higher in level from the present-day Lake Ontario. The Lower Don valley was a bay of the Lake, from the area of the present-day Prince Edward Viaduct. The area to the east of the Viaduct was a sand bar of Lake Iroquois. The East and West Don emptied into the bay in the area of today's forks of the Don.

Lake Iroquois eventually drained away to approximately sea level. The Don River cut through the area south of the Lake Iroquois shoreline to cut the narrow valley to the south. Lake Ontario rose to its present-day level, and the Don River floodplain rose through sedimentary deposition to its current level. The process left the Lower Don with a relatively flat and wide floodplain, and extensive marshlands at the mouth to Lake Ontario by the time of the arrival of Europeans.

Bedrock in the area is deep below the surface, with approximately 100,000 years of deposition over several Ice Age periods. The development of the deposition has been revealed by the excavation of the Don Valley Brick Works pit, which excavated a huge deposition of clay.

Settlement
Artifacts of Canadian First Nations settlements, likely the Mississaugas have been found in the Don Valley dating to the last few hundred years, with relics found along the Lower Don at today's Riverdale Park and the nearby Withrow Avenue.

Europeans made their first visits to the area in the 1600s. The first settlement in the area was by the French at Fort Rouille to the west. Settlement of the Don Valley came after the defeat of the French in Canada in the latter half of the 1700s. The arrival of Colonel Simcoe to set up the town of York in the 1790s led to further interest in the Don River and its valley. Simcoe is recorded as "finding one English family, that of Wm. Peake and three Indian Wigwams east of the Don" in 1793. The British set up the town site to the west of the Don River mouth, which at the time emptied into a large marsh. Simcoe himself set up 'Castle Frank' overlooking the Don Valley from the point of the western terminus of today's Prince Edward Viaduct.

One of the first settlers of the Don Valley was a group of German and Pennsylvanian Dutch settlers under the direction of William Berczy. The group, which arrived in 1794, cleared the area around the 'German Mills Creek' tributary in today's Thornhill area. The settlers also helped to build and maintain Yonge Street in the area.

One of the first settlers of the Lower Don area was Henry Scadding, who was granted land on the east side of the Lower Don River, which he cleared into a farm, where he constructed a cabin. In 1794, Scadding built the first bridge constructed over the Don River, in the vicinity of today's Queen Street bridge over the Don. The bridge connected York to the 'Kingston Road' which led to the eastern Ontario town of Kingston, Ontario. Governor Simcoe's wife kept diaries which record Coon's farm as being a six miles' row up the Don, and Skinner's Mill one mile north of Castle Frank.

Larger-scale settlement of the Lower Don valley began in the area of the forks of the Don, with the Don Mills, today known as Todmorden Mills. This was the location of Skinner's Mill recorded by Mrs. Simcoe. Governor Simcoe commissioned the building of the original sawmill at the site in the early 1820s. Settlement would also come to other locations along the valley, at Milne Hollow at the area of today's Don Valley Parkway and Lawrence Avenue interchange, and at Hogg's Hollow at the interchange of today's Yonge Street and York Mills Road. The sawmill came with a land grant for lands in the Valley and the lands were cleared to provide wood for the saw mill.

Other enterprises were built along the Don. At the foot of the mouth of the Don, Gooderham and Worts established their milling, and later distilling, enterprise. James Worts constructed a wind mill to power the complex in 1831, replaced by steam power in 1835. The lands along the Don would eventually be used for cattle ranches. In a report of City of Toronto engineers, entitled Ashbridge's Bay Reclamation, dating to 1890–1892, the drainage from 'cattle byres' along the Don, was considered 'one of the chief causes of its [the Bay's] rapid pollution." The Ashbridge's Bay and Marsh would eventually be filled in by the Toronto Harbour Commission for industrial land. The engineers proposed it for sanitation and as an addition to the city's waterfront.

Watercourses

 * Don River:
 * East Don River
 * West Don River

Infrastructure

 * User:Alaney2k/Bridges of the Don Valley