Buried in the woods: sawmill ghost towns of Nova Scotia

Mike Parker

Nonfiction: Nova Scotia, History, Industry

$22.95

208 pages

6 3/4" x 9 3/4" paperback

Includes 208 photographs

ISBN 978-1-897426-14-2

Order this book from: Nimbus Publishing (or 1-800-Nimbus9)
or Amazon or Chapters or Pottersfield Press mail order.

Buried in the Woods: Sawmill Ghost Towns of Nova Scotia resurrects the story of abandoned settlements hacked from the primal forest by timber barons. Nova Scotia's ghost towns are not the stereotypical version portrayed in the Old West with tumbleweeds blowing down deserted streets lined with derelict, weathered buildings and creaking doors swinging in the breeze. True to the book's title, most of Nova Scotia's deserted lumber towns are literally buried in the woods and forgotten, but Shulie Eatonville, Minudie, Lake Jolly, Electric City, Crossburn-Hastings, Roxbury, Mount Hanley, Conquerall, Irish Town, Canal Camp, Coote Cove, Markland, Raymond-Ville, River Denys Mountain, and Skye Mountain live again in the pages of this book.

Pictures are windows to the past. Mike Parker has painstakingly scoured archival and private photographic collections in his quest to breathe life into many of these lost communities. The result is a mosaic of 208 images, supported by Mike's trademark relaxed writing style, that is sure to entertain a diverse audience from adventurous sleuths looking for on-site discoveries to armchair heritage buffs and historians in search of an informative read.

Lumbering and shipbuilding in Nova Scotia date back more than four hundred years to when North America's first shipyard was established in 1606 at Port Royal. At the time of Canada's confederation in 1867, Nova Scotia was the wealthiest of the four provinces that initially made up the fledgling nation, its prosperity based largely on possessing one of the world's most extensive sea-going merchant fleets. Wood was king in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with thousands of Nova Scotians employed in lumber camps, sawmills, shipyards and factories that manufactured wooden products. In just one year during the 1870s, more than 1,000 Nova Scotia sawmills turned out enough lumber to build 3,000 vessels. Those halcyon days faded long ago into oblivion as have many resource-based communities that disappeared with the demise of tall trees and wooden ships.

Born and raised in Bear River, Nova Scotia, Mike Parker has been called Nova Scotia's Storyteller, a reference to the diversity of themes covered in his 13 books of popular history. The best-selling author has been researching and writing about his native province for more than twenty years. Mike is affiliated with the Gorsebrook Research Institute for Atlantic Canada Studies at Saint Mary's University as a research associate.

Also by the author: Gold Rush Ghost Towns of Nova Scotia.