The Scugog Carrying Place

The Scugog Carrying Place was a very important aboriginal pathway and portage that commenced at the shore of Lake Ontario in what is now the city of Oshawa and ended at the shore of Lake Scugog in Port Perry. This great trail crossed the Oak Ridges moraine which divides the waters flowing into Lake Ontario and those draining into the Valley of the Trent Waterway system. The trail was a very important footway of seasonal migration and communication for the last indigenous users of the trail, the Mississaugas, and likely, before them, the Iroquois. When American and European settlers began to flood onto the lands occupied by the First Nations, the trail was the only footpath through the forest and therefore influenced the settlement patterns of the new immigrants.