Early history Before the period of European colonization, the
Spanish River was used as a transportation corridor by the indigenous people of the
First Nations (primarily the
Ojibwe) as an important route connecting
Lake Huron's
North Channel to the area now known as Sudbury, as well as many areas deep in the continental interior of
Northern Ontario. People would migrate up and down the river seasonally, spending summers closer to the river mouth in the south, and migrating north to winter camps at
Biscotasing. With the advent of railways in the Manitoulin-North Shore region, it became increasingly practical to develop resource extraction industries in the area for export. Logging operations upstream would send logs downstream to be processed at Nairn and
Espanola and ultimately be shipped out by rail. As rail corridors in the area matured, logging operations gradually ceased using the river for transportation and instead began to use the railways; this was cemented by the creation of a number of power plants along the river, starting with High Falls in 1904.
Dam construction The Nairn Falls dam was constructed by the
Mond Nickel Company. A rival of the more powerful International Nickel Company (
Inco), the company had rapidly developed a number of mine sites and
company towns to the west of Sudbury, many of which were served by the
Algoma Eastern Railway and
Canadian Pacific Railway lines, which ran roughly parallel to each other, with the AER to the north and the CPR to the south in that section. Both lines served a mixture of pre-existing communities and company towns for both Inco and Mond. The two lines crossed each other just west of Nairn, then paralleled each other before crossing the Spanish River. The development of railway infrastructure passing through otherwise undeveloped Canadian bush created the opportunity for power lines to be erected, allowing an electrical corridor to be created running down the line to mine sites like
Victoria Mines, the Crean Hill mine, and the Worthington mine. The AER line was routed more closely to the Spanish River, creating engineering challenges due to the rough geography around the river, but also creating some opportunities. With the outbreak of the
First World War, the market for nickel grew dramatically and Mond began to step up production at its mine sites. There was mounting pressure to establish a new wave of power plants which could power the mines and smelters, which were in the process of converting from
steam to electric power. Nairn Falls was a convenient site, already located near the AER line and relatively close to the existing mining operations. Construction began in 1914 and was completed in 1915, "all but [obliterating]" the small pre-existing waterfall. The power plant became operational later that year, and was managed under a Mond Company subsidiary known as the
Lorne Power Company, which also managed the
Lorne Falls power plant, built in 1909 on the
Vermilion River. Both plants provided 60
Hz power to Mond's operations, in contrast to the 25 Hz produced by Inco's Huronian Power Company.
Early operations The plant complex employed four full-time workers, with one relief worker for holidays. Despite being only a short distance from Nairn, which had by then grown into a mature
railway town and primary point of access to the outside world, a small town site was laid out, consisting of two three-bedroom houses, as well as the "club house", which was run by a live-in cook and which served as a boarding house for maintenance workers. The powerhouse at the dam was the very first local telephone service subscriber in April 1917 and as a result was assigned a phone number of 1. In 1930, the Algoma Eastern Railway was acquired by the CPR, which quickly began to abandon sections of the railway which paralleled its own track and which were considered to be redundant. The track from Espanola to
Turbine (aside from the Little Current spur) was abandoned in 1931, including the section which ran next to the plant. The plant gradually became more secluded and separated from the nearby communities, especially as Inco abandoned the on-site worker housing and switched to using general operational and maintenance crews, and as rail traffic, including passenger rail, ceased along the old AER line. The
Second World War brought increasing concern and paranoia of German saboteurs. This was largely a renewal of the
anti-German sentiment of the First World War, which brought suspicion and persecution onto ethnic
German civilians living in Canada. Security generally increased at major industrial complexes, railways, canals, and harbours. As a precaution, Inco hired four armed security guards, two full-time and two relief, who patrolled the Spanish River dam complexes. No form of sabotage ever took place. ==Status==