Hidden Winter Drive: Ontario’s Forgotten Roads & the 1886 Bridge That Moved (Part 2)

Part 2 of Ontario's Forgotten Roads: a quiet winter back-road drive through Waterloo Region, Ontario. We pick up just past Crowsfoot Corners and follow Sawmill Rd along the Grand River into Conestogo, a village with three names. Then we cross a one-lane 1886 steel truss bridge that was moved here in 1928 (nobody seems to know from where), climb over the Conestogo flats, pass RIM Park and the old Woolwich–Waterloo township line, and finish at Martin's Meeting House and Wagner's Corner, near where three riders in 1806 named the Conestogo River. Martin's cemetery beside the meeting house has burials going back to 1831. Along the way we tag the family farms from the 1861 Tremaine map (Musselman, Weber, Eby, Martin, Snyder, Good, Shantz) and show then-and-now maps and air photos. Missed Part 1? Watch it here:    • Hidden Winter Drive: Ontario's Forgotten R...   Do you know where the Glasgow St bridge stood before 1928? Or why it's called Glasgow Street? Tell us in the comments! CHAPTERS 0:00 Cold open: the one-lane bridge 0:15 Previously on Part 1 0:41 Part 2: the route 0:54 Sawmill Rd along the Grand 2:40 Crossing the Grand River 3:00 Conestogo: the village with three names 3:55 Glasgow St S 4:36 The 1886 truss bridge 5:06 The bridge then & now (1861, 1955, today) 5:25 The Conestogo flats & the first Woolwich clearing 8:04 Millennium Blvd & RIM Park 9:16 RIM Park then & now (1930, 1955, today) 10:23 University Ave E: the old township line 12:30 Bridge St W: city on one side, township on the other 13:53 Martin's Meeting House 14:12 1806: the ride that named the Conestogo 14:37 King St N 15:12 Wagner's Corner 15:35 Recap & next time: Part 3 SOURCES Haldimand Proclamation (The Canadian Encyclopedia): https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en... Haldimand Treaty of 1784 (Six Nations of the Grand River): https://www.sixnations.ca/LandsResour... Woolwich Township history: https://www.woolwich.ca/explore-play/... Historical place names, Woolwich: https://www.regionofwaterloomuseums.c... Grand River, Canadian Heritage River (CHRS): https://www.chrs.ca/en/rivers/grand-r... Glasgow St S bridge (1886, moved 1928, 2026 closure): https://www.woolwich.ca/news/posts/re... Conestogo Bridge (HistoricBridges.org): https://historicbridges.org/bridges/b... Spanning the Generations, Region of Waterloo heritage bridges: https://www.regionofwaterloo.ca/media... Woolwich Countryside Tour 2 (Region of Waterloo): https://www.regionofwaterloo.ca/media... RIM Park: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIM_Park RIM Park inquiry (The Globe and Mail): https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/... Elam Martin Farmstead (Canada's Historic Places): https://www.historicplaces.ca/en/rep-... BlackBerry real estate sale, 2014 (CBC): https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitche... Bridge St W and the 2009 Countryside Line (ERO letter, 2023): https://ero.ontario.ca/public/public_... Martin's Mennonite Meetinghouse (GAMEO): https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Mar... Martin Meeting House (Historic Waterloo): https://www.historicwaterloo.ca/build... Martin's cemetery (City of Waterloo heritage report): https://www.waterloo.ca/media/2ushoqr... Eby, A Biographical History of Waterloo Township (1895): https://archive.org/details/biographi... 1881 Parsell county atlas (McGill University Library): https://archive.org/details/McGillLib... Farm tags: names from the 1861 Tremaine map; family facts from Eby (1895) and Region of Waterloo Museums. "Likely" marks a probable but unconfirmed link. CREDITS Map: Tremaine's Map of the County of Waterloo, 1861 (public domain), courtesy Region of Waterloo Air photos 1930: National Air Photo Library (NRCan), via the University of Waterloo Geospatial Centre Air photos 1955: Region of Waterloo Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors (openstreetmap.org/copyright) Bridge narration: read by the channel host Recap narration: AI voice (Kokoro TTS, Apache 2.0) Music: "Sydney's Skyline" by ALBIS (YouTube Audio Library) #OntarioBackRoads #ForgottenRoads #WaterlooRegion #WinterDrive #Conestogo