History of the campground

During the 1800's Silver Maple Campground was a beautiful lakeside spot packed with big old white pine trees. In the late 1800's the land was bought by a logging firm who clear cut the land (they left a couple of very young trees one of these you can now see standing by the office!) When they moved out in the 1920's a Finnish family bought the land and started a small farm,. 1928 saw the farmers welcoming a now very famous guest. It was in summer of 1928 that Franklin Carmichael one of the original members of the infamous Canadian Group of Seven painters came and stayed with the family in their farmhouse. He was struck by the beauty of the lake and decided to render it in paint. In 1952 a Hungarian hitch hiker fresh from fighting in the Second World War asked the farmer if he could stop for the night. The next morning he watched the sun rise from the top of the hill and fell in love with the place. He made his way to Sudbury and bought a car he then came back to the Farm every day for six months until the farmer relented and agreed to sell him the land. The first thing that George Nagy did was blast and lay a proper road to the boundry (now known as Nagy Road). Needing another big project he moved the farmhouse. George once told us how they dug the hole for the basement and literally lifted the house from it's foundations and moved it over! It wasn't long before George decided that the land was too beautiful to be kept to himself and so started to build the Campground. He went through a fair bit of dynamite and sweat in the next few years (George worked full time for Inco and dug most of the campground that you see now out by hand - including the Marina!) but by the early 60's he opened Nagy's Tent and Trailer Park which had 15 amp hydro service, running water and washrooms! For the time it was the most advanced campground around! Eventually Nagy's became known as Sandy Beach Campground. George planted all the trees that you see around the campground except the white pine. The Campground continued to florish through the years but eventually things were starting to get a little run down. By the 90's the hydro needed replacing, the washrooms modernising and the place was getting to be too much for an 80 year George who still maintained everything himself including cutting the grass on a 1950's lawnmower (which we still have if you would like to see it!) In 2005 George (then 89) finally decided to hand the reigns over to someone and the campground was sold. We  changed the name to Silver Maple and George watched excitedly as the diggers moved in to start the new water and hydro renovations. He had always dreamed that one day the Camp would be back to it's former glory, sadly he never saw it. George sadly passed away in December 2005. At Silver Maple we strive to complete Georges dream and we hope that once again Silver Maple Campground will be the most advanced Campground around!