Once A Local Weekend Destination Of Choice



A featured birdhouse designed in the likeness of the Massassauga Park Hotel, that was once a popular destination for area weekend picnickers, at Birdcity, Macaulay Mountain Conservation today.


It was well within his legal right to keep the gate closed. It was his property, he asserted, and he needed to keep his cattle from getting out.
His neighbour, on the other hand, needed the gate to remain open to allow visitors to access by land his grand hotel and park property that was located right on the water at Massassaga Point across from Point Anne.
The feud between the two neighbours, farmer George Wallbridge and his neighbour, Shelley Anderson, owner of the Massassaga Point Hotel and Resort, a favourite destination for area weekend picnickers since the late 1870s, gradually soured into an ugly legal battle in the early 1930s.
In the earlier decades when cruising on the Bay of Quinte used to be a popular leisurely activity on Sunday afternoons, the Massassaga resort location was a favourite destination for both day picnickers and well-dressed couples looking for a romantic evening out with a dinner at the grandiose three-storeyed hotel followed by a dance at the pavilion on site. The pavilion was built by Anderson after he bought the hotel and the park property from the original owner, Adam H. Wallbridge, in 1886.  Paddle wheel steamers brought visitors from as far away as New York, Toronto and even London, England, to this resort on The Bay of Quinte. Various cottages and outbuildings once formed part of the scenery surrounding the hotel.
Although most visitors to Anderson’s park still came by boats and steamers as they had been doing for many decades, development of inland roads gradually brought down the volume of steamer traffic in general and consequently, travelling by water to the resort, too, began to diminish.
Anderson’s business took a downturn when Wallbridge, who owned about 400 acres of  farmland surrounding the park including the area between the resort and the main road, won the case that went as high as the Supreme Court of Canada and was legally able to deny his neighbour land access across his property to the main road.
The court’s decision hurt the resort business significantly and when the Great Depression came along, it sounded the death knell for the park location where many had previously enjoyed happier times with their friends and families.

The park was sold and the hotel was demolished in 1934. In the latter part of the decade, the Ontario Rock Company began extracting limestone from a quarry from the southern tip of the shore. In 1971, the property was sold to the Prince Edward Region Conservation Authority and was designated as a conservation area.

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