(below) The intersection of Dashwood Road and Highway 21. The Port Blake harbour and docks were once located on the lake shore just west of this crossroad.

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“Port Blake is located on Lake Huron, north of Grand Bend, where Highway 21 meets Highway 83. The Port Blake harbour and dock were just west of this intersection. Established by mill owner, Richard Brewster, in the 1850’s, the settlement was named after its founder.

Brewster served as postmaster from 1853 to 1859. Later postmasters were: J.N. Cook, William McDougall, William Fulton, Margaret McDougall, Joseph Sharrow and Philip Baker. The Brewster post office was closed in 1914. Although Brewster was the post office name, the title Port Blake better reflected the settlement’s lakefront location. That name was used extensively in the 1870’s and 1880’s, when Port Blake became a major centre for the shipment of timber and other building materials.

The Blake and Hicks Company was granted $200 by both Hay and Stephen Townships in 1877 to build a dock. The dock was to be 150 feet long and capable of loading a vessel drawing at least seven feet of water when loaded. A road was cut to the harbour and Brewster/Port Blake became a Great Lakes port. The lumber shipped from here went to American cities such as Detroit, Cleveland and Buffalo. The barge steamer, Victoria, was soon making trips from Port Blake, loaded with lumber for the U.S. markets. It was 180 feet long and could carry 120 tons. The Exeter Times Advocate noted, on May 30, 1878, that when the steamer cleared Port Blake earlier that month, 80,000 feet of lumber was shipped out by Messrs. Blake and Hicks.

By spring, 1878, the port was becoming a boom town. The port now looked more like a community with the construction of the dock, a storehouse, a barn and a private dwelling. Property values increased and there was an air of excitement when Blake and Hicks opened a brickyard in the settlement. The clay bricks, which sold for $20 per thousand, were used for everything from ovens to cupolas. During the brickyard’s heyday, there were 30 or more employees producing fine, top quality bricks. R. Stanlake of Exeter surveyed part of his property into village lots and then held an auction. The buyers, mostly brickyard employees, wanted to put up their homes as quickly as possible. Blake and Hicks had shipped out over $16,000 of freight in one season aboard the Victoria, which now called at Port Blake twice a week. Such heady times, however, were not to last!

One of the first blows was the realization that the supply of local clay was neither as good nor as plentiful as assumed. A second and more disastrous blow came after Blake took over sole ownership of the company. The brickyard owner ‘solicited a large amount of money from Exeter and surrounding area people to finance the purchase of his steam brick machine as well as to support his shipping of area lumber to Detroit.’ Then, Blake abruptly left the area for Tennessee. A scandal resulted when the locals realized that Blake ‘also took a considerable amount of the money that he had borrowed,’ as reported by the Exeter Times-Advocate.

Today, there is no evidence of the 150-foot dock at Port Blake or the roadway which led down to it. There are two landmarks which do make Port Blake significant. The first is the Port Blake Conservation Area, with its beautiful sandy beach and picnic grounds. The more obvious landmark is the Lake Huron Water Supply System Station which pipes Lake Huron water to residents of London, Hay and Stephen Townships and the lakeshore area.”

extracted from “Hay Township Highlights: 150 years of Diversified Progress, 1846 – 1996”, published by the Hay Township Book Committee under the auspices of Hay Township Council, Alice Gibb ed.; pgs. 77-78 ISBN : 0-919939-43-0