POINT ABINO

Local legend has the name being derived from Pere Abineau, a Jesuit priest who is thought to have conducted missions to the First Nations peoples in the area in the 1690s. The area was sparsely settled with farms in the 1700s and early 1800s, and was the site of an extensive sand mining industry conducted by the Point Abino Sand Company between 1870 and the early 1900s. The Sand Company had docks on both the east and west shores of Point Abino which were connected to the sand and limestone quarries by a small railway. The Point Abino area is now primarily a mixture of preserved Carolinian sand dune forest and residential use... The Point Abino Peninsula projects southward from the north shore of Lake Erie about 18 kilometers / 11 miles west from the Canada/US border at the Niagara River. Geographically, it is a dense Carolinian forest situated on a base of sand left behind when the glaciers which formed the Great lakes receded over the underlying limestone reefs.

Also known as: Point Abino Association, Point Abino Sand Company