Explore the History of Essex – Alice Street

Step into the past with a tour featuring one of Essex Centre’s most historic and culturally significant roads – Alice Street.

From its early days as a bustling hub of community life to its modern-day charm, Alice Street has been home to generations of families, businesses, and public spaces that helped shape the Town of Essex into what it is today.

Settlement in Essex Centre began in the early 1800s and was initially slow because the area was further inland and landlocked with no access to the river or lake. However, that would all change in the 1870s with the expansion of the Canada Southern Railway tracks across Talbot Street.

Alice Street is one of the oldest streets in Essex Centre predating Village and Town Status, and developed throughout the 1870s by three cousins: Gordon Wigle, Jeduthan Wigle, Leonard Iler.

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