[citation needed] In 1864, Thomas James Cooper and his wife, Emma and three young children, emigrated to Canada on the steamship "Hector" from Fawkham, England.

There they set off into the bush to find a location to build their home, in lands that turned out to be occupied by wolves.

Emma and Thomas Cooper built a house and general store half a mile from a waterfall on the Black River.

He believed in prohibition and thus, was not pleased when men from the lumber camps would show up in town, drunk.

A strand of 14 coloured light bulbs has been strung between the town's former general store and an old wooden building known as "the courthouse".