[1] The museum was formerly a boarding house operated by Fanny Pike at the beginnings of the 1900s and now houses artifacts from the Muskoka region from its founding by Thomas Burgess as well as those pertaining to Lucy Maud Montgomery, the author of the Anne of Green Gables series and The Blue Castle.

It sees visitors from around the world regularly, especially for the annual Anne of Green Gables Day, with re-enactments of Montgomery's two-week visit to the region in 1922.

While on their honeymoon in Prince Edward Island, Linda and Jack Hutton discovered that Montgomery visited Bala for two weeks in 1922.

[2] The Tree Lawn Tourist Home, where Montgomery ate her meals while visiting the region, had been for sale for six years, and the couple bought the building to prevent its destruction.

They bought the sheet music from eBay, discovering after the auction that they were bidding against the National Library of Canada.