[3] The Spanish River has been used as a transportation corridor for thousands of years, initially by First Nations and later in the 19th century by fur traders.

During the late 19th and mid 20th centuries, the river was used to transport timber from logging camps in the upper Sudbury District to Georgian Bay, where they were towed by tugs to sawmills on the Great Lakes.

A diesel tug towed large rafts of logs the length of Agnew Lake to big Eddy dam where they were sluiced down a flume by crews with hand held pike poles.

It took place at the Canadian Pacific Railway bridge upstream from Espanola and downstream from the High Falls dam, about 5 miles (8 km) west of the town of Nairn.

[3][6] It was established in 2006 and is intended to provide recreational paddling opportunities, in particular for canoeists of intermediate skill level.