Ontario Trans-Canada Highway Route: #17 between Marathon and Wawa, Ontario
Here is the itinerary of the 180 km along #17 between Marathon and Wawa:
The forests in this leg of the Trans-Canada indicate a major shift in eco-zones. The forests north of Wawa are most coniferous Boreal Forest, while the forests south of Wawa are mixed deciduous-coniferous which are part of the Great-lakes St Lawrence ecozone.
Marathon was a company town, which used to be a fur trading post which grew to a population of about 2500 in the 1940s when the Marathon Corporation of Canada (now part of American Can Company) built a kraft pulp mill there.
Heron Bay is 5 km south of the Trans-Canada, at highway #627, which continues south to the Pic River Indian Reserve and Pukaskwa National Park. This town was built by the Ontario Paper Company, which used Great Lakes freighters to ship logs from the nearby Black River and Pic River valleys to their plant near St Catherines. When the company switched to rail transport in the 1960s they abandoned the town.
White River is in a "bowl" which shelters is from Lake Superior's moderating influence, and because colder air falls down, it tends to be colder than surrounding communities. White River was settled as a Canadian Pacific Railway deport.
About midway between White River and Wawa is the Obatanaga Provincial Park. It has several large lakes and is popular with shorebirds. Southeast of this park the terrain moves into an area rich in iron. The iron found in this region was a key factor in locating a major steel plant at Sault Ste Marie, where access to the Great Lakes enabled shipment of finished steel to manufacturers in both Canada and the US.
Wawa was built on terraces left behind by the receding shorelines of Ice Age glacial lakes (just like the terraces at Terrace Bay, to the west). Wawa boomed due to a chance gold discovery in 1896, but after the gold petered out, the prospectors shifted to iron required by American industry.
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