Welcome to my O'Hara Mill Page

© 2004 Peter Sporring All Rights Reserved

O'Hara Mill Pioneer Homestead and Conservation Area is one of my favourite haunts for photographing wildlife and people. This 85-acre area was once part of lands owned and farmed by the O'Hara family since the 1820s and is now under the umbrella of Quinte Conservation. It is generally a place of total peacefulness and solitude, depending on many of the events and special days that occur there during the summer months. For a complete listing of these events please visit the Quinte Conservation web site on my related links page. Many visitors come just to relax and have a picnic or wander the walking trails that meander through the site where you can explore floodplain and upland habitats on either side of Deer Creek that flows into the Mill Pond. The two marked trails can be traversed in less than an hour if you are just plain walking, but if you are a nature enthusiast or a photographer like myself, plan on a full day , especially in the spring months of the year when birds are returning, animals are on the move and a variety of wild flowers are just emerging.

But my first and foremost interest in O'Hara Mill is the sawmill itself. In May of 1850, James O'Hara, in partnership with his son James Jr., built the mill on the edge of Deer Creek and then the dam above it which formed the mill pond and the power to operate the mill. It was a typical small country operation of the mid-19th century supplying the local population with its growing appetite for sawn lumber up until 1908 when it was closed down. The mill used an English Gate, or Frame Saw technology, which is a massive wooden frame in which a large saw blade is held taut in a vertical position. This frame, which was mechanically linked to the log carriage, was driven up and down by a crank shaft connected to a water powered turbine. Since its closure in 1908 the building fell into a gradual state of disrepair to the point were it was in danger of being lost forever. In 1947, Moira River Conservation took the site over and the mill was rebuilt to the point were it was able to saw for very limited periods a couple of times a year until about the mid 1960s when it was presumably shut down for good due to safety concerns and budget restraints.

On November 3rd, 2000, a group of volunteers including myself, formed Friends of O'Hara Mill and over the next two years, one day a week during the summer months, restored the architectural integrity of the building itself, and then got all of the mechanical components in working order. But, due to some major problems with the dam itself and the sluice gate that supplies water to the turbine, we will have to put on hold operating the mill in its former glory until those concerns can be addressed. In the mean time, we plan on installing an auxiliary power plant to at least show all the moving parts in operation. I will be adding information and photographs to this page in the near future of what we have accomplished so far and what we plan for the future of the mill, as well as work done on other buildings and trails within the complex. And of course there will be pics of the flora and fauna that abound there, naturally !! So, come back and browse from time to time and see what's new at O'Hara Mill.

The Sawmill in operation circa 1898. That's James O'Hara with the white beard in the foreground.

Front view of the Mill ready to collapse in 1952.

Streamside view of the Mill ready to collapse in 1952.

The reconstructed Mill in 1957. Many volunteers and Companies donated their time and materials to this effort in saving the Sawmill from complete loss at that time. Unfortunately, many of the recycled barn timbers used in that reconstruction of the building were already quite old and continued to deteriorate over the next forty five years.

Before I get on with the restoration of the Mill, here are some of the Flora and Fauna to be found in and around the area.

Jack in the pulpet on the short trail below the sawmill.

Sharp Lobed Hipatica near the Lois Wishart Trail.

Grey tree frog in the north woods.

Mallard nest west of the picnic shelter.

Geese on the Mill pond island and a great blue heron on the far shore.

Peter installing a new wood duck box at the north end of the Mill pond. Hopefuly we will have some residents this year as the old nest box was not too appealing to them the last couple of years due to the lack of a roof.

The Sawmill Restoration Began in August, 2001.

In November of 2000 a core group of volenteers, Friends of O'Hara Mill, was formed to look into the possibilty of bringing the old sawmill back into operation, or at the very least, restoring the achitechtural integrity of the building itself. The active group consisted of Maurice Goulah, Reg Mouck,Barry Mitchel, George Skalin, Pam Duncan and Peter Sporring.The actual work began in the spring of 2001 with a total cleanup of the building which included the removal of many years accumulation of coon and porcupine droppings. We decided that every wednesday would be our work day and whoever was available would show up.

Once the cleanup was done, we started by taking the weight off the foundation with several post jacks placed throughout the building and then cut out and removed all of the rotted sill beams and support timbers. Peter had new beams at the ready which he had logged and sawed from his own woodlot the winter before, and over the next few weeks these were fitted into place and the stucture was lowered onto its footings once again. I won't go into all of the little jobs that were done over the next year and a half as it would make for a lot of boring reading, so will instead include below a number of photos taken throughout the process, with the odd note of interest here and there.

Peter logging cedar in his woodlot and sawing new timbers on his Board Bandit Sawmill.

An example of many of the rotted timbers throughout the building that had to be replaced.

George and Peter anchoring a new vertical support beam into place. Many of these looked OK on the outside but were in fact decayed quite badly on the inside and could not be trusted to support the building for many more years.

Many of the old concrete footings in the basement area that supported the sawframe and turbine bearings had almost totaly disintegrated and required replacement. George and Barry handmixed several yards of mortar and concrete and Peter did the masonry work.

One of the main problems with the function of the mill was that its mechanics are an integral part of the building structure which was leaning a good two inches towards the creek causing the saw frame to bind on its slides. To remedy this we installed a long one inch threaded rod on the diagonal from the top of the saw frame to a point lower on the outside of the building. With much grunting and groaning from George, Barry and the building, we were able to slowly attain that two inches of movement and the saw now moves freely on its slides.

Well, a lot has happened at O'Hara Mill, and the last couple of years has seen the building of the new overshot wheel by Carl and Dave Blakely. The wheel is seven feet high and has 25 buckets, each holding 15 gallons of water at full flow translating to about 3,700 lbs of thrust, more than enough to power the sawmill. It was installed in August 2007 with the help of the McBeath Brothers putting a hole in the stone wall for the shaft. Vic lemmon then manouvered the wheel into place with his excavator. In the spring and summer of 2008 I built the new sluiceway to provide water to the wheel and did extensive repairs to the inner workings of the Mill. We sawed our first log in 38 years on Heritage Day in July.

     For a really detailed look at what we have accomplished with the O'Hara saw Mill, go to our "O'Hara Mill Volunteers Association " website at www.ohara-mill.org  and click on "Site Map" for all the different pages.