Lake of Bays Heritage Foundation

Memoir

History of Price Point

A camp site that came with 80 acres and 2000 feet of shoreline

One year during the 1920s, Norman Price of Niagara Falls, New York, his brother Albert, of Cleveland, Ohio, and their two brothers canoed into Lake of Bays after a camping trip in Algonquin Park. They explored the lake a little before camping on a point of land north of Baysville, which belonged to Peter Burleigh Bastedo. The remoteness of the location appealed to Norman and Albert, and they sought out Bastedo to enquire about buying a small piece of land. Upon receiving the deed they discovered that not only had they purchased the camping site on the point, but roughly eighty acres and almost two thousand feet of shoreline along with it. In the following years, the two brothers built two modest cottages on the point where they spent the next several summers. 

Norman and Albert shared what came to be called Price Point until the Depression, after which time the two sold the property to their nephew, Arthur. Price Point continued to be a family place, where all the extended family visited for the same two weeks every summer. To access the cottage family members had to drive to Langton House north of Baysville where the proprietors took them across the lake to Price Point by boat. Eventually a small private landing was built in Whiskey Bay, but the family still had to take a short boat ride around to the cottage. A road was eventually cut through the trees and over a high hill to connect the land with a Township road.

This information was collected in an interview with Joan and John Price in the summer of 2013.

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