Ontario, Oregon
Ontario was founded on June 11, 1883, by developers William Morfitt, Mary Richardson, Daniel Smith, and James Virtue. In March 1884, Richard Welch started a post office for the quarter of Ontario, so named by James Virtue after Ontario, Canada. Two months later Joseph Morton applied for a Morton post office at an island about one mile south of town, with Oscar Scott as postmaster. Unfortunately for Morton and Scott, merchants Morfitt and Richardson of Malheur City, gold miner Virtue, and lumberman Smith of Baker City acquired more land and were better financed. More importantly, Morfitt had negotiated a train depot for Ontario. All the settlers and speculators knew the railroad was coming and how important that would be to Ontario's future so Scott closed his Morton post office and built a hotel at present-day Ontario. By December, Scott was Ontario's postmaster.
Essex County, Ontario
The area that has come to be known as Essex was one of the first counties to be settled by non-indigenous people in Upper Canada, later to become Ontario. The settlements were mostly established by French people in the mid-18th century. Around 1749, the first permanent settlements began to appear on what is now the south or Canadian side of the Detroit River, across from the French Fort Detroit. They cultivate long, narrow plots of land along the river. Despite the name, this is not a river as such but a strait connecting Lake Huron and the smaller Lake Saint Clair in the north to Lake Erie in the south, as part of the Great Lakes system in the middle of the North American continent.