Collapse! Factors that Affected the Growth and Abandonment of Settlements in Haliburton County

This study explores the question of why some settlements in frontier environments persevere to the present, while others become “ghost towns,” and how the forces affecting these changes can be reflected in the region’s material culture such as built form. To help answer this question, the authour examines a relevant case study from Haliburton County in Ontario, on the Canadian Shield. The first colonial settlements in Haliburton County began as farming villages in the 1860s. Some of these hamlets exist today, but others were abandoned after the first few decades. The author examines the material culture of the region, including such built form as colonization roads, railways and highways, the organisation of which helped to predetermine the rise and/or fall of settlements. The examination of the region’s built form through the lens of Central Place Theory helps us to identify how particular populated centres came to merit higher standings in the regional hierarchy of settlements than others did, by offering access to coveted services in the economic, transportation and communication sectors. The authour suggests that the locations of initial settlements along colonization roads situated some as ideal sites in which to build railway stations when railways were built through the area in the 1890s. Possessing railway stations, in turn, positioned some settlements as central places through which paved roads were built when that mode of infrastructure became dominant by the 1930s. The progression of these forces led some settlements in Haliburton to prosper, and others to wither and become abandoned. Taken together, a heightened perception of the dynamics of how transportation and communication infrastructure and built form impacts local social environments can help us to better plan the ways in which regions are developed today.