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Annapolis Royal

From DARwiki

Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia

Bird's Eye view of Annapolis Royal & Granville Nova Scotia 1878, showing the town in its golden years as railway terminus with the Annapolis Royal Station, wharf, railyard and enginehouse

Facilities & Features

Commerce & Industry

Description & History

Originally known as Port Royal, the port served as the capital of Acadia until captured by the British in 1710 and renamed Annapolis Royal. Defended by fort Anne, the town served as the capital of Nova Scotia until 1749. When Halifax was founded that year and became the capital, Annapolis Royal became a small garrison town and shipping point for western Nova Scotia. Wooden shipbuilding grew in the 1850s reviving the town's fortunes. The arrival of regional steamships in the 1860s made the town an important steamship connection point and coaling station between Saint John and Boston.

The town boomed in 1869 when it became the terminus of the Windsor and Annapolis Railway. The railway built extensive terminal facilities at Annapolis Royal centred around a large railway wharf. Lumber and apple exports grew requiring new spurs and piers. The railway stimulated several factories and population grew to over 1,500 in the 1870s.

Construction of the "missing link" between Annapolis Royal and Digby began by the federal government in 1889 and employed over 400 workers based in Annapolis Royal, including 45 Italian workers on contract and quartered in the town.[1] The first train to travel west of Annapolis Royal was on August 21, 1890, when a Windsor & Annapolis Railway work train from Annapolis Royal driven by Robert Stewart with conductor David Cook carried a load of ballast and rails for the construction of the missing link to Upper Clements.[2] The link was completed when regular service to Digby and Yarmouth from the town began on July 27, 1891. At first trains of the Western Counties Railway arrived at Annapolis Royal from Yarmouth to connect to Windsor & Annapolis Railway trains for Halifax.[3] A larger new station and an electric signal system was built at Annapolis Royal to handle the new rail interchange traffic.[4] Coasting on the railway prosperity, Annapolis Royal incorporated as a town in 1893.

However when the Dominion Atlantic Railway merged the WAR and the WCR in 1894, the new line's trains could proceed directly westward and Annapolis Royal ceased to be a terminus. Furthermore, the Dominion Atlantic shifted shifted most of the steamship connection traffic to Digby and Yarmouth where larger steel-hulled vessels required deeper waters. Annapolis Royal became a small country town with passenger traffic served by a small wooden station on the edge of town with some lumber and apple exports from the old rail facilities downtown.[5]

Despite this decline, a growing tourism industry in the 20th century was drawn the long and colourful colonial history of the town, its genteel architecture and the preserved ruins of Fort Anne. The DAR featured Annapolis Royal prominently in DAR tourism promotion and built a finely detailed arts and crafts style brick station to reflect the town as a cultural destination.

The DAR's Observation-Parlour car "Annapolis Royal" was named after the town as well as two locomotives, No. 15, & No. 29.

Gallery

References & Footnotes

External Links

  1. ↑ Barry Moody, A History of Annapolis Royal: A Town with a Memory, Nimbus (2014), page 142.
  2. ↑ W. W. Clarke, Clarke's History of the Earliest Railways in Nova Scotia (c. 1925) p. 11.
  3. ↑ Marguerite Woodworth, History of the Dominion Atlantic Railway, page 109.
  4. ↑ "Railway Improvements", The Acadian, July 31, 1891
  5. ↑ Barry Moody, A History of Annapolis Royal: A Town with a Memory, Nimbus (2014), page 143.
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