Hello again explorers, today, we have a rural exploration post from the small village of Monkton, Ontario, situated in Perth County.This sleepy hamlet located on the interesection of county roads 55 and 23 caught our attention as it holds a lovely dilapitated railway station.
Monkton owes it genesis to the building of the Logan road in 1857. Mr. T.M. Daly dropped the very first structure, a blacksmith shop and soon after, a variety of other businesses took root such as a cheese factory, match factory, two saw mills, planing mill, shingle mill, tannery, hotel, school, and two churches. Within a year, Edward Greensides was named postmaster - having a post office certainly put a community on a map.
In November of 1906, a rail line was constructed to provide goods and passenger service from Milverton to Guelph and onto Toronto. As a result of this, the Monkton South railway station was built and very little of it's outward appearence has changed since 1907.
As with many other rural Ontario rail lines, the development and improvements of new and existing roads sounded the death knell. We were not able to determine exactly when the last train rolled through this village or when the tracks were pulled up but do know that the building did lay derelict for a period before being reused by a local company, Machan Construction as a warehouse and workshop. Currently, the station is abandoned of all use and is slowly deterioating.
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