Elora's Limestone Gorge: A Cycling Tour of a Village Reshaped

Elora's limestone gorge has shaped the fortunes of this small Ontario village for centuries. On this bicycle tour, you'll see how a 410-million-year-old seabed shaped the gorge that both nourished and nearly destroyed this Ontario village.

The tour starts at 78 James Street, across from Victoria Park, where trails wind along the Gorge's cedar-lined rim. You'll pass overlooks like Lover's Leap, tied to an old story of tragic love, and the Tooth of Time, an isolated rock pillar nearly dynamited by a mill owner in 1903. Along Mill Street, you'll pass the historic Elora Mill before pedaling onward through downtown.

You'll ride past the Mundell Furniture Factory site, once Elora's largest employer, then follow the Grand River through Bissell Park onto the converted railway trail of the Elora-Cataract Trailway. Further on, you'll pass the Wellington County Museum and Archives, once a nineteenth-century poorhouse, then cross the Trestle Bridge above the Grand River Valley. The tour ends near Gilkison Road, named for the sea captain who gave Elora its name after visiting caves half a world away.

On this 150-minute tour, you'll have a chance to:

• Hear how a British sea captain named Elora after ancient carved caves he encountered near Bombay, India
• Visit the site of the T.E. Bissell Company, once Canada's leading disc harrow maker supplying John Deere
• Learn how a debt-forgiving wager produced downtown's towering eight-foot limestone Stone Wall
• Pass by the Poor House Cemetery, resting place for 271 residents whose families never claimed them
• Find out how the Gorge recovered from decades of industrial pollution, sewage, and even fire
• Cast a line into the Grand River, a world-class fishery stocked with brown trout each spring
• See views of the David Street Bridge from cedar-lined trails high above the Gorge

By the time you reach Gilkison Road, you'll understand exactly how time, industry, and nature reshaped this small Ontario village.

We acknowledge with gratitude the work of Stephen Thorning and Kenneth Hewitt, a local historian and naturalist whose passion for Elora produced most of the information we will share with you today.