In the nineteenth century, most farmers relied on dug wells (which literally meant dug by hand!), while village residents often took their drinking water from the waterway.

By 1880, Fenelon Falls was finally starting to come together as a village, having been founded by land speculators Robert Jameson and James Wallis nearly 50 years earlier.

When the first European settlers migrated to the Kawarthas, the construction of the Trent-Severn Waterway almost immediately became the political issue that could move mountains.

Once Fenelon Falls separated from Fenelon Township in June 1874 to vote a subsidy to build the Lindsay, Fenelon Falls and Ottawa River Railway.

Fenelon was fortunate to have Anne Langton, who sketched the development of the region in the 1830s and 1840s, decades passed before there were any other known local images.