page_title: List of Ontario colonization roads
section_title: The Ottawa and Opeongo Road
hierarchical_section_title: List of Ontario colonization roads / List of colonization roads / The Ottawa and Opeongo Road
caption_attribution_description: Old farm along the Opeongo Road, Renfrew County, Ontario, Canada
context_page_description: The colonization roads were created during the 1840s and 1850s to open up or provide access to areas in Central and Eastern Ontario for settlement and agricultural development. The colonization roads were used by settlers to lead them toward areas for settlement, much like modern-day highways.
context_section_description: The Ottawa and Opeongo Road, also known as the Opeongo Line, was one of the initial colonization roads surveyed by Hamlet Burritt and A. H. Sims under the supervision of Robert Bell in 1851–52. It was constructed westward from Renfrew beginning in 1854, reaching as far as the Hastings Road in Whitney by 1865; thereafter the survey line continued to Opeongo Lake. Today, Highway 60 follows the old road between Algonquin Park and east of Barry's Bay. At that point, the road branches out to the southeast, following portions of Renfrew County Road 66, 512 and 64. Approximately 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) west of Dacre, it encounters Highway 41. From there to Renfrew, Highway 132 follows the old road.
  Several songs have been written about the Opeongo Line, one of the most recent by Canadian singer-songwriter Terry McLeish.  His song, "The Opeongo Line", has been included in several musicals and a tourist CD production of this historic road.
  The now-abandoned settlement of Newfoundout was created as a result of the Opeongo Road and Public Land Act. Thirteen pioneer families took up occupation on the land they had been granted up a mountainside 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) off the main road. These families struggled to farm the rocky soil for thirty years, from the 1860s to the 1890s, while their settlement failed to attract institutions or other settlers. It was officially declared abandoned by 1948. More recently, the ruined log cabins have occasionally attracted photographers due to their high level of preservation.
caption: Old farm along the Opeongo Line
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