Photo Du JourWindsor

Kavanagh’s Tourist Camp

The postcard above was postmarked in 1948, however it is likely a much older photograph.

Tourist Camps were all the rage in the 1930’s as more and more people traveled around by car. Tourist camps were motor lodges where you rented a little hut in a campground type setting.

Here is the same scene as the postcard shot the other day.

The building looked to be similar to a General Store. Today, the building has been enlarged and a peaked roof added, and it is very much vacant, but there is no mistaking it.

Kavanagh’s also served as the Oldcastle Post office, and featured the products of Windsor’s Purity Dairy.

Interesting that the roof of the garage in the rear of the house on the property advertised the availability of gas.

No trace of the building’s history is visible today, but it is still interesting to note. There were hundreds of these kinds of camps all over Ontario in the days before the 400 series of highways were built. Kavanagh’s was right on Highway 3, which incidentally was the only Canadian Highway to begin and end at a US border crossing. The Highway once ran from the Ambassador Bridge at the Windsor/Detroit border to the Peace Bridge at Fort Erie/Buffalo.

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