When it comes to rainy day getaways, Toronto Lake isn’t likely the first place that jumps to mind, but never underestimate the power of stir craziness.
An almost uniform veil of silvery-gray storm clouds had blanketed the sky, and I watched as sequences of small waves disappeared into rocky banks.
On the high hill behind me, the cemetery and other remnants of the Carlisle settlement, south of Toronto, dripped with newly fallen rain, not far from the ridge where Thomas R. Carlisle himself once lived.
Carlisle was born in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Kentucky in 1832, but set on seeking his fortunes farther west, he settled in the Verdigris Valley atop the aforementioned ridge in spring of 1857.
The view would have been significantly different at that time, as the lake and dam wouldn’t be constructed for another hundred years, and the Verdigris River still prominently snaked through the valley.
Indeed, it’s noteworthy just how much the lake water ultimately obscured, from swaths of Carlisle’s original claim, to other homesteads, railroad tracks and geological formations such as the Outlaw Rock Shelter.
One item that remains, however, is a hand dug well on Carlisle’s claim, which retired pharmacist Wes Koschke was kind enough to show me, along with sharing a hilarious story about his neighbor, Big John, whom he once mistook for Sasquatch.
Speaking of fairy tales, three years after Carlisle arrived, Daniel Beane, along with his wife Effie and sister-in-law Lucinda, arrived in the Verdigris Valley as well, setting up camp not far from Carlisle’s cabin.
One day, Lucinda was watering oxen along what is now Carlisle Creek when Thomas Carlisle himself happened to be watering horses.
Cue cupid’s arrow.
Three weeks later they were married at Belmont, home of the Civil War fort several miles to the east, though during the war Carlisle and his neighbor Carey Mullinex were actually stationed at Fort Row near Coyville.
It was there, in 1862, that they witnessed Chief Opothelyahola and his band of several thousand Muskogee (along with other native people and slaves) die in the snow in untold numbers, after the aid they were promised by the Union was withheld.
The sky had begun to brighten somewhat when I moved up the road a bit, with just a hint of pastel blue creeping through the cloudbank.
In the distance, not terribly far across the water, sat Duck Island, so named given its particular shape, and to which I recently kayaked during warmer weather.
The island is unique for a number of reasons, one being that it was originally a high hill before the valley was flooded; and post-flooding, it possesses its own unique ecology, brimming with trees and grass and soil all adapting to the watery surrounds.
Around 1860, members of the Wilhite family built a cabin there, and about a half mile to the north, Smith “Smidty” Wilhite operated a rough-and-tumble tavern.
Smith, by the way, earned his name by fighting alongside Captain John Brown in his bloody campaign to end the horrors of slavery.
