Last week in our look back on Cochrane history, we heard of the first train to arrive in town in December, 1908. During that winter, the bridge over the Abitibi River – east of Cochrane – was built. Railroad construction to the east continued, and was completed in 1916.
Cochrane Public Library archivist Ardis Proulx-Chedore says that from that point, the importance of the railroad cannot be underestimated.
“There was no road linking Cochrane to the rest of the world,” she points out, “so transport of passengers and merchandise was entirely by rail. Cochrane survived the early years thanks to the money spent on the Continental and the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario railroads.”
The boom continued into 1909.
“The first women to come to town on their own were Mrs. Tiggs and Mrs. Whiting, from Matheson, to establish a restaurant,” says Proulx-Chedore. “ On January 22, the first mail was delivered to the Cochrane post office. There were 400 houses and other buildings and a 40,000-gallon water reservoir, a wooden TNO station, a roundhouse, section houses and a coal reservoir were built.”
You can wander through time, too, in the archives every Friday between 2:00pm and 5:00pm, although the library is closed to the public for the next three weeks because of the COVID-19 situation..
