NOVA SCOTIA
Pictou County
NO PART OF THE FOLLOWING
ARTICLE OR THE PHOTOGRAPH
MAY BE REPRODUCED WITHOUT
PERMISSION FROM THE AUTHOR ©
This was a tourist site on a high hill overlooking parts of five counties near Middle River. Mi'kmaq natives named it "Espokumegek", meaning "a high land". European settlers had arrived there in the 1790s and over the next century established churches, schools and a post office.
Likely due to the influx of visitors wanting to see the view, a tall tower was constructed to enhance that purpose, but no date has surfaced for its construction. Sometime around this, a museum was built that was run for a couple of decades from the 1930s through 1959 by Clifford (Clifton ?) Rose. One of its doors featured a relief carving of a bathing-suited girl of the era.
The venture proved popular enough that amusement rides were provided by a carnival company (Bill Lynch Shows?) in the summer months. If it was Lynch Shows, this likely could not have happened before the early 1920s because Bill did not start providing rides to Nova Scotia events before then and did not leave Findlay's Pleasure Grounds to go on the road as a traveling carnival until 1925.
In 1959, the Province of Nova Scotia bought the operation and made it into a public park with a picnic area, as it remains today.
|
Thanks to Peter Smiley of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia for suggesting
this park. The door image is a cropped and enhanced photograph from the Nova Scotia Museum. |
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