RODGERVILLE

NAME: RODGERVILLE COUNTY: ONTARIO ROADS: 2WD GRID: CLIMATE: Snow in winter BEST TIME TO VISIT: Spring summer or fall

COMMENTS: REMAINS: Today, along Rodgerville’s once busy main street, a mere three original buildings still stand.

Matthew Rodger was one of the first settlers to arrive in the Queen’s Bush in the early 1830s. He started the small hamlet along the London and Goderich road that developed into a busy town of over a hundred inhabitants. Rodger first built a double house, part serving as a hotel and part as a general store. He added a blacksmith shop and carriage works. A few years later he opened a brickyard that employed 22 men, a large enterprise for the time. In 1870 a cheese factory opened exporting as far as Scotland and Germany. In 1871, the main street was lined with two hotels, two stores, three blacksmiths, two shoemakers, a butcher, cooper and wagon maker among others. But the railroad was soon to claim another victim. When the London Huron and Bruce Railway located a station at Hensall rather than a Rodgerville, the town began its demise.

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