Gananoque

Gananoque stands where its river meets the St Lawrence among the Thousand Islands, downstream from Lake Ontario. Falls on the smaller river supplied power for mills, while the great river linked the settlement with Kingston and Montreal. The name was first applied to the river and is of Indigenous origin, although its precise meaning has been variously interpreted.

After the American Revolution, Loyalist Joel Stone established a sawmill here in 1789. By the early nineteenth century mills and workshops lined the river, and Gananoque served as a forwarding point for supplies moving westward. During the War of 1812, an American party raided the settlement and destroyed its bridge. British forces fortified the place afterwards, using it as a base for gunboats protecting transport among the islands.