In 1833, the government of Upper Canada hired Andrew Walker and the Drury brothers of Kempenfelt to cut the Sunnidale Road. Charles Rankin and William Hawkins had surveyed the road earlier in the year. Walker had been hired as an ox-wagon teamster some years earlier to widen the Nine-Mile Portage and had stayed on as a settler. Now the government wanted to replace the portage with a road that could be used by settlers. The problem with the portage was that, as anyone who visits Fort Willow can testify, in the summer it was swampy and buggy, in the winter it was impassable, and it was very difficult at any time.

The old Sunnidale Road ran from Kempenfelt Bay near Barrie, initially along the route of the Nine-Mile Portage, through Sunnidale Township to the mouth of the Nottawasaga River at what is now Wasaga Beach . The Sunnidale Road shown on today's maps differs slightly from the original; it was rerouted to avoid some of the swampy area just north of Barrie.