Horton Landing

Horton Landing, Nova Scotia

Mile 45.93 from Windsor Junction on the Halifax Subdivision (Mile 61.15 from Halifax)

• Next Station East: Avonport
• Next Station West: Grand Pre

Facilities & Features

• Horton Landing StationH
• Apple Warehouse, 10,000 barrels, the Grand Pre Fruit Company
• 1472 feet long Passing track in 1969
• Gaspereaux River Bridge

Description & History

Horton Landing was an important ford across the Gaspereaux River and a shipping point where schooners could tied up at the river bank to land freight and passengers from the Acadian era onwards. It was a a major site for the Acadian deportation in 1755. A large town plot was laid out for the settlement of the New England Planters in 1760, but merchants preferred the sheltered harbour at Wolfville for shipping so Horton Landing remained a farming community. The landing was an important site for unloading equipment and rolling stock during the construction of the Windsor & Annapolis Railway and the site of a large construction camp to build the difficult Gaspereaux River Bridge which proved to be the last link to complete the line in December 1869. The railway brought a small station and later an large apple warehouse run by the Grand Pre Fruit Company.ref>Dominion Atlantic Railway, DAR Chart of Apple and Produce Warehouses, February 23, 1927</ref> A memorial cross marking the believed location of the loading point for the Acadian Expluslion was installed beside the tracks in 1923. Passenger trains ceased stopping in June 1980.

Gallery

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  Locomotive No. 24 with an westbound passenger train crossing the Gaspereaux River Bridge in Horton Landing, Aug 24, 1902.

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  Horton tracks and snow canyon during the famous winter of 1905.

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  C.P.R. track profile drawing showing Horton Landing, Mar. 18, 1918.

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  Gaspereaux River Bridge with the Horton Landing approach tracks looking eastward on July 31, 1958.

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  Horton Landing Station,looking east with the Horton Landing apple warehouse in distance, 1958 or 1959.

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  Topographic map from Kentville to Hortons Landing circa 1956.

References & Footnotes

• Alexander MacNab, Windsor and Annapolis Railway, Report of Alexander MacNab Nov 1, 1873
• 1969 Memorandum of General Information