Jesse Hoyt, manager of the
Acadia Coal Company in 1866, began to call the village Acadia Mines.
Jesse Hoyt, manager of the
Acadia Coal Company in 1866, began to call the village Acadia Mines.
The town was incorporated in August 1894 when Sheriff J. Sim took a poll that resulted in 273 for and 208 against incorporation.
A major factor in the vote was the need for a town water supply.
On May 25, 1868, a public meeting was held to name the community. After much debate Westville was chosen. Why? - The village was west of Albion Mines. Albion Mines later became known as Stellarton.
Westville's history is rich in mining. Coal was first discovered in the area in 1864 and when John Campbell found the Great Seam of Coal in 1865 the future of Westville was shaped forever.
Miners and their families flocked to the expanding village. Their arrival prompted entrepreneurs that would provide services to those families.
And so the town grew. Westville, as it is today, owes its life and its culture, its community and many of its friendships to the men that started and toiled in those underground pits, where fear was a constant companion and the only solace was the company of men who toiled along beside them.
The Black Diamond Mine began operations around 1866 under the Nova Scotia Coal Company. In August 1866, the Black Diamond Mine was hoisting one box of coal at a time by horse and windlass.
Around the mine a village was created as colliers came for employment and businesses soon followed. Westville was born.
The company built a rail line to Granton where they used their own shipping pier to transport coal. They had 2 locomotives; the No. 19 was used as engine and the Magnet was used as a shunter.
The rail line used a 100' high pitch pine bridge near where Horne's Bridge is today. The Black Diamond rail line was later taken over by the Intercolonial Rail Road.
In 1875 the Black Diamond Mine ceased operations after encountering inferior coal and striking the downthrow. A downthrow is a heavy geological fault which interrupts the coal seam (the Acadia and Drummond Mines were later able to overcome this obstacle). Rather than risk capital to find and develop the seams below and beyond the fault, the NS Coal Company decided to close.
The Mine was sold to the Black Diamond Company who employed 45 men at the mine from 1888 to 1891.
About 1891 the Nova Scotia Steel and Coal Company bought the Black Diamond and reopened it to supply their blast furnaces at Ferrona Iron Works. No. 19 was used as a hoisting engine while the Magnet was used at Ferrona as a shunter. Upon the transfer of the blast furnace to Sydney Mines the Black Diamond Mine was closed forever.
Mr. John Campbell first discovered the great seam of coal in 1864. He obtained a lease of land in that area and sold his rights to a company from Montreal called the Intercolonial Coal Mining Company Limited. Sir G. A. Drummond was president and land development of the Drummond Mine began in the spring of 1867.
The Drummond began to hoist coal on July 16, 1868. Two slopes were mined to the front of a large seam and the company succeeded in extracting 12, 396 tons that same year. A rail line was built to the Middle River where they had erected a shipping pier. The shipping pier measured 750' long and 30' wide. The deck was 60' above low tide water levels and the channel was 350' deep at this point. The pier was equipped to load five ships at once to the amount of 1500 tons a day. Due to the lateness of construction, they only managed to ship between two and three thousand tons of coal that year. They later built a line through Bear Brook to Riverton to connect with the government rail lines for shipping during the winter (this rail line was dismantled in 1887 and the area was used as a rifle range).
On October 1, 1868, an Inauguration Ball was held at the Masonic Lodge in Pictou to open the Drummond Colliery and its rail line.
In 1869 Mr. James Dunn was manager of the Drummond Mine. Their haul increased substantially so that in 1872 they sold 105, 545 tons of coal. By 1873, the Drummond Mine was in full swing and was stockpiling coal on the surface and in the upper workings of the mine. The company was anticipating record sales but just as they were beginning to ship an explosion took place that took the lives of 59 men and 1 boy - one quarter of the total number of men working at that time.
By 1893 the Drummond employed 700-800 men and rented out houses for $2.50 per month.
In the late 1890s a coke oven was built at the Drummond Mine, along with a coke washer and a plant to manufacture fire brick.
In 1910 the Drummond Mine boasted of having a slope that was one of the longest in the world at a continuous haul of 9200 feet. The mine employed 700 men underground and 300 men aboveground and hoisted 413, 000 tons in 1910. Malcolm Blue was the manager.
In 1914 The Intercolonial Coal Co. took over the Acadia Mine renaming it the Drummond No. 5.
In April 1914, the Number 5 Boiler of the Drummond Mine exploded. William Betts, Manuel Josey, Arthur MacKearney, Lorne MacKenzie, D. L. McMillan, Frank Ryan and George Taylor, all of whom had been eating their lunch in the room directly above it, perished in the explosion.
There was an investigation but a conclusive reason for the disaster was never determined. It was thought that the explosion had been caused by a low water level in the boiler (creating extreme steam pressure) or perhaps by an inferior boiler plate in the boiler itself.
After 1914 most of the mining performed was on seams previously worked and the production figures dropped steadily.
The mine produced coal under the Intercolonial Coal Company until 1953 when it changed hands to Henry R. Thompson - a Westville native who operated under the name of the Drummond Coal Company. At this time it employed about 100 persons.
The underground shafts closed in 1984 when the mine was purchased by Pioneer Coal who surface mined the area. In 1995 operations ceased - forever ending the legacy of Westville's most famed mine.