Verulam Township

The township was ten concessions (each 7⁄8 mile or 1.4 kilometres wide) and thirty-two lots deep, and was surveyed on the Lake Ontario frontage system.

In 1818, six chiefs of the Mississauga First Nations met at Port Hope to sign a treaty to convey to the Crown all the land which is now City of Kawartha Lakes and Peterborough County for the sum of about £740.

The township was surveyed in 1831 by the government of Upper Canada and lots were first offered for sale in 1832, for 8 shillings per acre.

Lumbering was the first important industry to be developed, as the township had abundant stands of white pine up until about 1904, when loggers moved northward into Haliburton and what is now Algonquin Park.

Thomas Need built a lumber and grist mill, laid out a village plot, founded a Post Office, and supervised the building of the first lock on the Trent-Severn Waterway.

The lakes were important to early transportation, though lumber interests mostly controlled use of the waterway until the system was completed in 1920.