The Cookstown of today is a charming little village of quaint shops and historic streetscapes. It’s one of Innisfil’s most notable and distinctive communities. Its success wasn’t foresworn, however. Cookstown’s early settlers faced difficulties in founding the community two centuries ago.
The biggest obstacle faced by land-hungry immigrants was the so-called Big Swamp.
The Big Swamp is an extensive expanse of marshes, deep creeks and dense tamarack forest located just east of where Highway 400 exists today. You can still see hints of the swamp, which extended several miles north and south of the route of modern Highway 89, in the form of marshy stretches, tangled woods and black earth farms.
The Big Swamp was virtually impassible and would isolate the south-east of Innisfil from the remainder of the township.
As a result of this isolation, Cookstown had an identity removed from Innisfil. Most of its settlers were northern Irish (predominantly from Ulster and Tyrone), while the remainder of southern Innisfil was initially dominated by Scottish immigrants. In addition, the lack of east-west communication meant Cookstown enjoyed closer ties with the communities of Essa and Tecumseth townships than it did with those of Innisfil.
Thomas Cook, for whom the village would eventually be named, was probably the first settler, arriving in the early 1820s. Close on his heels was John Perry. Perry operated a tavern in the fledgling hamlet. Because of the Big Swamp all movement was north-south, along what is today Highway 27, which was then a busy stage-coach route. This road was so busy, and Perry’s tavern so prosperous, that Cookstown was originally called Perry’s Corners.
The community’s isolation from the balance of Innisfil began to lift around three decades later as the wilds of the Big Swamp were slowly tamed. In the 1850s a corduroy road of logs, the precursor of Highway 89, was built to provide Cookstown farmers with access to the railway siding at Gilford. It was a primitive roadway, often a sinking morass in wet seasons, a danger to horses because of shifting logs, but an obvious step forward.
Over the next decades farmers slowly nibbled away the edges of the marshland, cutting down trees, clearing shrubs, and draining wetlands to reveal rich muck soil beneath. Soon, the Big Swamp was not so imposing, or so impassable, after all.
Cookstown was isolated no longer.
