Built around the 1850s of wooden cribbing filled with large stone and topped with wooden planks, the piers at Wilson served merchant schooners and excursion steamers traveling to and from Toronto well into the 1990s. Wilson became a prime resort destination for day-long and weekend trips, with visitors picnicking at Lake Island Park on the east end of Sunset Island just west of this site; the park also included what is now Clark Island and the Clark family's private property to the south, and the larger two-story ornate cottage on the east end of Sunset Island was constructed in the 1890s as part of the park. During the Days of Sail and the later era of steamships, commercial boat traffic moved across Lake Ontario and the waters around Wilson, and several store-houses stood near the area now occupied by the waste water treatment plant, where timber and crops from Wilson's rich farmland, especially fruits and grains, were stored for export. Lake schooners, some built at Wilson, returned with sawed lumber and other commodities, while passenger steamers brought people to the lakeside resort. Commercial fishing of blue pike, sturgeon, and perch continued until the 1960s. In the 1950s, the federal government replaced the old storm-damaged and rotting wooden piers with steel sheet piling driven into the lake bottom, cut level, and filled with rock and concrete; no pedestrian access existed until 1964, when a small concrete walkway was added, and the newer piers have protected the mouth of Twelve Mile Creek from lake storms and reduced the need to dredge silt.