The Stanhope Museum located in the Haliburton Highlands of Ontario is home to more than 140 years of records and artifacts. This Ontario museum specializes in local pioneer history and is home to the historic Hawk Lake Log Chute. Hawk Lake Log Chute is the only remaining log chute of its kind in Ontario. The log chute has been painstakingly repaired and reconstructed. The log chute is an excellent example of typical logging practices in Ontario when logs were boomed down the Highlands’ lakes in the spring after a winter of cutting and hauling logs from logging stands south of Algonquin Provincial Park. The log chute was the way to get logs down the rocky rivers that ran between the different lake elevations. If you are looking for information on Ontario heritage or history, Ontario pioneers, pioneer settlement, early settlers or genealogy the Stanhope Museum staff can help.

Our volunteers are knowledgeable about Stanhope and Haliburton history and we are proud to be one of five Haliburton museums dedicated to collecting and preserving the heritage of our region. Our seasonal exhibits rotate annually and have included topics like logging, farming, settlement and homesteads and have featured census data, patent land records, bylaws, land grants and other fascinating records as well as interesting artifacts, antiques, tools and equipment.

The Stanhope Museum is one of Ontario’s smaller museums but it has one of the largest archives of Ontario pioneer history and records available to the public for viewing or research purposes. A veritable wealth of Ontario history, the museum is only a two hour drive from Toronto just north of the town of Minden in the scenic Haliburton Highlands of Ontario.