It extends from Georgian Bay in the west, to the northern tip of Lake Couchiching in the south, to the western border of Algonquin Provincial Park in the east.

This region, which, along with Haliburton, Kawartha Lakes, and Peterborough County is referred to as "cottage country", has over 2.1 million visitors annually.

Muskoka is populated with several villages and towns, farming communities, lakeside vacation hotels and resorts near golf courses, country clubs, and marinas.

Lake Muskoka was then the hunting grounds of a troop led by Chief Yellowhead or Mesqua Ukie or Musquakie.

In recent years, various Hollywood and sports stars have built retreats in Muskoka, including Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, Mike Weir,[5] Martin Short, Harry Hamlin, Cindy Crawford, and Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell.

Studded with lakes and rocks, the good land offered an abundance of fishing, hunting, and trapping, but was poorly suited to farming.

The Muskoka and Haliburton area, with its chain of lakes and rivers, its fur-bearing animals, its fish, wild fruit, and maple sap, would have supported a large Indigenous population, but written evidence suggests that until very recent years it has harboured only nomadic groups.

[6] Largely the land of the Ojibwa people, European inhabitants ignored it while settling what they thought were the more promising area south of the Severn River.

In the present day, Muskoka contains four First Nations reserves: Until the late 1760s, the European presence in the region was largely limited to seasonal fur trappers, but no significant trading settlements were established.

The authorities began exploring the region, hoping to develop a settled population and find travel lanes between Lake Ontario and Georgian Bay.

Once a land connection was made to the southern part of the lake in Gravenhurst, the logging companies could harvest trees along the entire lakefront with relative ease.

Starting with his steamship the Wenonah, Ojibwa for "first daughter", in 1866 Cockburn pressed the government to open the entire Muskoka lake system to navigation.

The government was eager to reinforce development in light of the faltering agricultural plan, and built the big locks in Port Carling in 1871.

1860 two young men, John Campbell and James Bain Jr, made a journey that marked them as perhaps the first tourists in the region.

People were drawn by the fishing, natural environment, and an air free of ragweed, providing relief for hay fever sufferers.

Farmers who were barely scratching a living from the rocky soil soon found demand for overnight accommodations arriving on their doorsteps.

The steamship era gave rise to the area's great hotels: Rosseau, Royal Muskoka, Windermere, Clevelands House, Beaumaris, and many more.

Trains regularly made the run from Toronto to Gravenhurst, where travellers and their luggage were transferred to the great steamers of the Muskoka Navigation Co, such as the Sagamo.

Making regular stops up the lakes, including at Bracebridge, Beaumaris, and Port Carling, tourists could transfer to smaller ships, such as the Islander.

The hotels became the centres of wealthy vacationers' lives, and families conducted extended stays that could stretch for weeks or months in the summer.

As families became seasonally established, they began building cottages near the hotels; at first simple affairs replicating the rustic environment of the early camps.

With the boats, the wealthier summer people built boathouses, often elaborate structures in their own right, in many cases designed with the look and feel of the main "cottage".

It was used strategically during World War II as a training field for the Norwegian Air Force after the Nazi occupation of Norway.

Postwar prosperity brought another boom based around the availability of the automobile, improved roads, and the newly affordable fiberglass boat.

Spooner, Ontario's Minister of Municipal Affairs, had appointed Donald M. Paterson to conduct a review of the District's local government arrangements.