Zimmerman was once a thriving village located in the valley between No. 1 and No. 2 Sideroads and Appleby Line.
Peter and Mathias Zimmerman settled on farms on Appleby Line at the Twelve Mile Creek Valley. The property then became the Village of Zimmerman.
Peter’s son, Henry P. Zimmerman had his sawmill and built a large stone house on the corner of Appleby Line and No. 2 Sideroad in 1870. Henry established a house, sawmill, flour mill and a turning factory.
These businesses supported the village’s most successful industries: grain milling and lumber. Peter’s other son, James, also owned property on Appleby Line.
By 1869, the village had a general store, two sawmills, a grist mill, a school, a shoe shop, a tailor, carpenter, blacksmith shops and a woollen mill (that was never completed). The Post Office was in the store and each day two pupils from the school would fetch the mail for the children to take home after school.
Peter M. Zimmerman, the son of Mathias, moved from the farm and settled at Wellington Square and built The Zimmerman House Hotel, a three-storey brick hotel at the corner of Brant and Elgin streets, which still stands today and is known as The Queen’s Head.
Peter took over the family farm after his father Mathias died and together with his sons they had other enterprises besides farming, including selling bootleg liquor (for which they got caught from time to time), and also involved in horse trading.
In 1915, the Zimmerman grist mill burned down. The other older shops and mills were soon abandoned and either fell into ruins or were razed. Remnants of the mills can still be found off Appleby Line between No. 2 Sideroad and Twelve Mile Creek.
The last time the general store operated was in the 1930s.
The Village of Zimmerman was incorporated into what is now Burlington. Its importance as a lumbering centre is all but forgotten
