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History of Wawa


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Fort Michipicoten was located five miles southwest of the town at the mouth of theMichipicoten River. It was at the junction of the main fur trade route from Montreal westward and the route to James Bay via the Missinaibi River.

The French were in the area by at least 1681 and built the post in either 1725 or 1727. By 1729 it was an outpost of Fort Kaministiquia in VĂ©rendrye's Postes du Nord. When the British conquered Canada in 1763 it was abandoned. Four years later it was re-opened on the same site by Alexander Henry the elder and Jean Baptiste Cadotte. The route from James Bay was explored by Edward Jarvis (1775) and Philip Turnor (1781). In 1783 it was taken over by the Northwest Company. In 1797 the HBC built a rival post on the north bank. With the union of the two companies in 1821 the Lake Superior trade was diverted from Montreal to Hudson Bay via Michipicoten. This lasted until 1863 when the arrival of steamboats and railways made it unnecessary. From 1827 the fort was the headquarters of the Superior Division and several annual meetings were held here. It was a centre for fishing, boat-building and small-scale manufacture and repair and a base for missionaries and surveyors. It was closed in 1904. The site was on the south bank of the river opposite the mouth of the Magpie River. As of about 1980 there was only a grassy clearing, some foundation stones and the remains of the dock.

Modern

Wawa's history is rich in mining, forestry, and the fur trade. Although mining attempts began as early as the late 1660s, it wasn't until 1896 that gold was discovered on nearby Wawa Lake, leading to a rush to the area. The population grew from only a handful of people to approximately a thousand.

In 1898, the town site at what is now called "the Mission" was registered as "Michipicoten City." In 1899, Wawa was surveyed and plotted into a town and registered as Wawa City. In the latter half of the 1950s, the town's name was
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