page_title: Eramosa River
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Eramosa River / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Eramosa River, Guelph, Ontario: view at confluence with Speed River, fall colors
context_page_description: The Eramosa River is a river in Wellington County in southwestern Ontario which rises near Erin, Ontario, and flows southwest through the city of Guelph, where it joins the Speed River, which then enters the Grand River in Cambridge. The river is believed to derive its named from the Mississauga word um-ne-mo-sah, meaning "black dog" or "dead dog".
context_section_description: John Harris settled in the Rockwood area in 1821 and constructed the first mill on the Eramosa River. Harris and other settlers made use of stone quarried from the banks of the river to build dozens of mills, including the Rockwood Woolen Mills in 1867. Built from wood, the first woolen mill was destroyed in 1880 and rebuilt as a stone building in 1884. The mill eventually transitioned to steam power and then electricity before it closed in 1925. As early as the 19th century the Eramosa River was used as a garbage disposal site. A landfill on Guelph's York Road was operated on the banks of the Eramosa until it was closed in the early 1960s, when it was covered with soil and transformed into an urban park.
  The Guelph Boating Club was founded in 1870 when the success of Saint John's Paris Crew made rowing a popular activity throughout Canada. By 1873 the river was a hotbed of local activity, with one site known as "Paradise" hosting facilities such as swings, picnic areas, and a shooting range. At another location known as "the Rocks", boaters would row out to search for fossils, pick berries, and hunt ducks. An offshoot of the Guelph Boating Club opened Victoria Park on the banks of the Eramosa River in 1886, and the site soon became a popular summer getaway for boaters and campers. The Boathouse, a local landmark, was erected on the banks of the Eramosa River at this time and gave locals a chance to rent boats for taking out onto the river. The Eramosa River was featured on postcards printed by the International Stationary Company and other Ontario-based printing houses in the 1910s.
  Charles Ambrose Zavitz, a professor at the Ontario Agricultural College, identified the Paradise area as being ideal for small-scale farming, as it was located on a floodplain too marshy for any agriculture which required wagons or other machinery, and suggested it as a place model prisoners could engage in penal labour and develop a prison farm. The first structures at the Ontario Reformatory was built on the banks of the Eramosa River in 1909 and received its first fourteen prisoners (called "trusties", as they were trusted to work without armed guards or shackles) in April 1910. Another popular site, the Rocks, was made into a quarry where materials such as lime and crushed rock could be mined and used for construction at the Reformatory. The prison and the Rocks were connected by a small railway that traversed the Eramosa River by way of a bridge that was also built by the trusties. The cornerstone of the Ontario Reformatory was laid down by Premier James Whitney on 25 September 1911, who ceremoniously crossed a concrete bridge built by the inmates just a year earlier before arriving at the prison. Inmates at the Ontario Reformatory were also responsible for landscaping and creating ponds along the banks of the Eramosa. Twice in the prison's history prisoners escaped the Ontario Reformatory by boat and rowed down the Eramosa River to Guelph before disappearing, leaving the boat behind. The Ontario Reformatory shut down in 2001, but the land remained property of the government of Ontario until 2019.
  The Rookwood Harris Woolen Mill, which was constructed on the banks of the Eramosa River in 1867, was abandoned in 1925. The first textile mill in the region, the machinery inside was powered by the flowing waters of the Eramosa while it was operational. A. J. Casson, a member of the famed Group of Seven painters, visited the site at one point to paint the mill and the Eramosa River. The building became a local landmark until it was closed to the public in 2007 when the structure (which had been gutted in a 1967 fire) was deemed unsafe. Restoration was undertaken on the structure (costing $850,000) by the Rockwood Conservation Area and it was ultimately reopened in August 2011.
  24-year-old Guelph resident Cody Thompson disappeared on 1 April 2016 after making a phone call made to his father from the area of the Boathouse and was registered as a missing person on 11 April. A police search of the Eramosa River shortly after turned up a fragment 
caption: Eramosa River at its confluence with the Speed River
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