Grande Chute Volunteers cabin public wifi, first aid, water, and rescue gear base.
The Grande Chute: From Logging Frontier to Volunteer Base
The site of Grande Chute played a crucial role in the Dumoine’s timber era. In 1850, the Dumoine Boom and Slide Company built a 300-foot timber slide and a 25-kilometre tote road linking the river mouth to Grande Chute, one of the busiest corridors of the Ottawa Valley lumber frontier. For decades, teams of river drivers and ox-drawn wagons hauled supplies and squared timber through this rugged stretch, making Grande Chute a natural staging point and rest stop.
By the early 1900s, the Dumoine Club’s lease extended north to Grande Chute, and sportsmen, rangers, and local guides continued to travel that same road to reach the upper lakes. Although no permanent structure from that era is recorded, the location’s accessibility and high ground made it ideal for later use as a ranger outpost and, eventually, as a modern volunteer base.
Today’s Grande Chute Cabin, maintained by the Friends of Dumoine, carries forward that legacy. Once a waypoint for log drivers, it now serves those who protect and restore the river’s wild spaces. Its presence marks both continuity and renewal, a place where the industry that once transformed the Dumoine gives way to stewardship, conservation, and community.
“We have been working since 2022 with Zec Dumoine, in turning their Grande Chute compound into a welcome and emergency centre.
In 2023 we restored the volunteers cabin, added public wifi, added search and rescue equipment, two glamorous outhouses, a beautiful landing dock and portage trail at the takeout and provided two sheltered picnic areas.
In 2024 we added a running spring water tap, canoe rests and a public first aid kit in the 24/7 screen porch.
This year we added a beautiful bench looking upriver from Grande Chute, a historic interest sign about Grande Chute, a new 1 km interpretive trail to explore a River Drive Camp discovered near the portage takeout and a Dumoine Watershed museum in the trailer onsite.
Thank you to Nicolas Cadieux, Peter Edmison, Maggie Glossop, David Bella Boudreau , The Audet Family and the Tyler Family who contributed many volunteer hours this season to help all this happen” – Friends of Dumoine
Screened in porch of Volunteer Cabin. Open 24/7.
New stairwell to Dumoine museum.