A sawmill, a brewery, a paper mill and a nature preserve, all on one site
Todmorden Mills
What began as a 1795 sawmill on the Don River grew into a small industrial hamlet — a brewery, distillery and paper mill — before becoming a heritage site combining museum galleries with a 9-hectare wildflower preserve.
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Todmorden Mills began around 1795 as a sawmill on the Don River, supplying lumber for the growing Town of York. In 1821 the Helliwell family settled the site, adding a brewery and distillery and renaming the settlement "Todmorden" after their hometown in Lancashire, England. Over the 19th century the site grew into a small industrial hamlet: a grist mill, paper mills that produced York's first machine-made paper, the brewery and distillery, and housing for mill workers, all powered by the river.
A heritage site and nature preserve
Todmorden Mills opened to the public as a heritage site in 1967, as East York's contribution to Canada's centennial celebrations. The present-day site combines two historic houses, gallery and theatre space, and a relocated historic Don train station, alongside a 9.2-hectare wildflower and nature preserve with trails through upland forest, bottomland forest, swamp, pond and meadow habitats — an industrial-heritage museum paired with a genuine nature preserve on a working stretch of the Don.
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