Elora

The Grand River has cut a gorge about twenty-two metres deep through dolomitic limestone at Elora, and the village sits on the rim, built from the same stone in the nineteenth century around a five-storey stone mill that now operates as a hotel. The Elora Quarry, an old limestone quarry filled with spring water, was a swimming hole long before it became a conservation area in 1976; it is ringed by cliffs up to twelve metres high and now has a daily capacity limit and advance reservations. The Elora Gorge conservation area below the village runs tubing on the river through the rapids. Sections of the gorge floor hold the Cascade and the Hole in the Wall.

History

Roman Catholic missionaries visited the area in the early to mid-1600s, the first European settlers arrived in 1817, and Captain William Gilkison from Ayrshire founded Elora in 1832 on 14,000 acres he had bought on the Grand River, naming it after his brother's ship, itself named after the Ellora Caves in India. Gilkison opened a sawmill and a general store before his death in April 1833, the settlement became a village in 1858, and in the 1850s and 1860s it was a major agricultural market; by 1870 it had several mills, two distilleries, a carpet factory, a tannery and two furniture factories (Wikipedia, Elora, Ontario).

Highlights

• The gorge - a twenty-two metre limestone canyon through the village.
• The old mill - a five-storey stone mill on the river, now a hotel.
• The quarry lake - a spring-fed swimming quarry inside cliff walls.
• The tubing run - river tubing through the gorge rapids in summer.

When to go

May to September for the quarry and tubing, both of which need advance reservations and sell out on hot weekends. The village and gorge trails are open year-round.

Before you go

Quarry and tubing capacity is capped with reservations required, and walk-ups are turned away in summer. The village is expensive and busy on weekends. Gorge trails have unfenced drops.

Nearby

St. Jacobs lies southwest; Guelph is south.

Key facts