The history of Loch Lomond & The Trossachs

People have lived around these lochs for thousands of years. The Romans built a fort at Bochastle, beside the river at Callander, in the first century AD. After them, the great rock at Dumbarton became Alt Clut, the fortress of the Britons of Strathclyde, until Viking kings from Dublin besieged and took it in 870. Christianity came early too. St Kessog is said to have brought it to Luss in the 6th century, and by 1238 Augustinian canons were building their priory on Inchmahome. Through the Middle Ages the Earls of Lennox held the country around Loch Lomond, with a castle on Inchmurrin. Then the visitors came. William and Dorothy Wordsworth toured here with Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1803, and in 1810 Sir Walter Scott published The Lady of the Lake, set on Loch Katrine, which sent readers north in their thousands. The first steamer, the Marion, reached Loch Lomond in 1818, and the railways followed, to Balloch in 1850 and Callander in 1858. In 1859 Queen Victoria opened the waterworks that still carry Loch Katrine's water to Glasgow. The twentieth century brought the Loch Sloy hydro scheme in 1950, the Queen Elizabeth Forest Park in 1953 and the West Highland Way in 1980. In 2002 the whole area became Scotland's first national park.