Bytown - Richmond Landing

Richmond Landing

Richmond Landing was a small settlement started in 1809 with Jehiel Collins' store, which preceded Bytown in present day Ottawa. It was located just south of Victoria Island east of the present-day Portage Bridge in present day Lebreton Flats. Wrightsville (Hull, Quebec), just across the Ottawa River, also near the Chaudiere Falls, had already been founded by this time.

Collins built a log cabin and store on the south shore of the Ottawa River, near the Chaudière Falls area. Later the property was acquired by Caleb T. Bellows, an assistant in the store. Collins is credited as the first settler of what would become Bytown. And by 1819, the little settlement at the landing got its first tavern operated by the Firths.

The settlement was named Bellows Landing until the fall of 1818, when a group of settlers responsible for the creation of a new road to Richmond, Ontario stayed there. The road became Richmond Road and Richmond Landing acquired its name. Sergeant Hill, had directed the creation of Richmond Road, Ottawa's first thoroughfare, a road which contained tree stumps, whose origin likely began at a portage trail bypassing the Chaudière Falls.

Richmond Landing was an area for those heading to and from Richmond could dock and receive correspondence and supplies from the outside world. A tavern constructed in 1819, whose existence had been shown since Bytown's earliest maps, was excavated prior to the construction of the Canadian War Museum whose east side currently covers it. Early maps also show the locations of buildings, and a Governmental store, constructed later. A buildings had been requested by early settlers to hold items that had previously been left near or on the dock by boats providing items for the settlements.