was performed by two Aberdeen, Scotland stonemasons and took all of the summer of 1919 to complete. After her death in 1921, the land and inn was inherited by Merrill Denison, her son and a very successful entrepreneur. He continued to operate the inn until the beginning of the Great Depression in 1929 along with his first wife, Muriel Denison, an author whose works include the "Susannah" series (Susannah of the Mounties, et al.), made famous by the Shirley Temple film adaptions. After that, the inn was leased to the Leavens Brothers who operated it as a summer hotel, and other portions of the property were rented out for use as a boys' camp and other recreational purposes. In 1936, the inn and many outbuildings were destroyed in a fire started by lightning striking the bakehouse. The loss was not fully covered by insurance, and the inn was never rebuilt. Merrill Denison continued to spend summers at Bon Echo, using it as a quiet location to write. Some of the cottages, including Dollywood and Greystones, remained in use as summer getaways for years, but financially the property was often a burden on the Denisons. In 1955, the Province of Ontario passed legislation allowing them to accept donations of land to form provincial parks. Although he could have made a substantial profit dividing and selling sections of the property as building lots, Denison's interests in conservation led him to donate the land to the province for the purpose of forming a park in 1959. In 1965, Bon Echo Provincial Park officially opened. A plaque was placed at the narrows dedicating the park to Flora MacDonald Denison and Muriel Denison. Recreation Rock climbing In 1956, Kay McCormick, Marnie Gilmour, David Fisher and Alan Bruce-Robertson paddled across Mazinaw Lake in a canoe on the Saturday of the Labour Day weekend, and climbed a rock outcropping subsequently named Birthday Ridge. On Sunday (Marnie's birthday), they climbed Front of the Pinnacle. This marked the first rock climbing on Mazinaw Rock. The Alpine Club of Canada maintains a hut on the lake, and Bon Echo rock climbing remains core to the ACC's Toronto Section to this day. Camping, hiking, boating and swimming Bon Echo's 400+ campsites in the Mazinaw and Hardwood Hills campgrounds are typical of those in the Ontario Parks system. Grassy or lightly wooded lots are set back from unpaved access roads and are