Not Your Grandfathers Mining Industry, Nova Scotia, Canada

Birchtown’s Black Granite

In the 1930s, the Birchtown area of Shelburne County began a decades-long period of quarrying its distinctive “black granite.” The story highlights how relatively small changes in how rock forms can make big differences in its characteristics and what it can be used for.

Black granite is actually a rock called gabbro. “Black granite” describes its appearance but is inaccurate since gabbro is a different type of rock than granite. Gabbros are typically dark grey, black or greenish because they contain dark-coloured minerals like amphibole, olivine and biotite. Granites tend to have light-coloured minerals like quartz, feldspar and muscovite.

Quarrying in Birchtown started in 1931 on boulders near the road. Because the area has many large erratics – boulders transported by glaciers and later deposited as the glaciers melted – the Shelburne area has an unusual history of extracting rock from huge boulders sitting on the ground, in addition to more conventional extraction from bedrock. Glaciers, in effect, did part of the quarrying by breaking boulders free from the bedrock and leaving them concentrated in the area. (See the story of another Shelburne quarry that extracted from boulders: https://notyourgrandfathersmining.ca/shelburn-granite-boulders).

In 1933, quarrying in bedrock began at a site now referred to as the Porphyritic Quarry (see the map below).

Quarries 1 and 2 began in 1935 and 1938 respectively. Quarry 2 went on to be worked extensively. Because its workings extended below the water table, the quarry would later have issues with flooding.

In 1941, the Main Quarry was opened. In 1945, a quarry immediately south of the Main quarry was worked but was then given up in in favour of the Main Quarry.

Several other sites in Birchtown were also worked, including the Gallows Quarry, Burbine’s Pit and George’s Pit.

A 1947 report described four different categories of black granite in Birchtown, the characteristics of each resulting from how the rock formed.

Rock with high feldspar content was the lightest shade, meaning it was a dark grey. Feldspars are often white or other light colours, so high feldspar content lightened the overall look of the rock. The report said, “It is the opinion of some that this rock is too light to be marketed as black granite; however, one quarry is still in operation. The rock is very hard and is fresh, thus it takes a very good polish.” (Gabbro used in monuments such as headstones needs to be polished to give it a shiny look.)

Rock that contained a high level of chlorite, a relatively soft mineral, had a “dull green appearance. The rock is too soft to take a good polish which, added to its dull appearance, renders it unsuitable as a commercial stone.”

Rock with low chlorite content was “a cross between the two above-mentioned rocks.” It was darker and polished well. However, “this was not always the case. Until polishing methods were improved, this rock had no commercial value. At present it is the main source of ‘black granite’ at Birchtown. This rock weathers well.”

The porphyritic stone, meaning it contained a combination of large crystals and much finer material, was very similar to the low chlorite stone. However, it had mica crystals scattered throughout, some as large as one inch in diameter. “These large crystals render the rock useless for the tombstone industry where an even texture is desirable. The abundance of biotite, however, makes for a dark rock which might possibly be used successfully as a building stone. When polished, it would quite possibly be suitable for interior decoration.”

In addition to monuments, black granite from Birchtown was also used in buildings.

The Birchtown quarries were operated by Wilfred Tennyson Dauphinee, who was born in 1910 in Shelburne. He served as MLA for Shelburne from 1941-1956 and served as Minister of Trade and Industry from 1950-56.

Dauphinee also operated a quarry in what is now the Islands Provincial Park, one of many examples of how Nova Scotia’s parks and protected areas often contain former mines and quarries (https://notyourgrandfathersmining.ca/shelburne-island-park-quarry).

Quarrying in Birchtown was still being done in 1957 when Department of Mines officials visited to inspect the quarrying activity and Dauphinee’s plant in Shelburne where rock was cut and polished. Kenny Construction also used 160 blocks of Birchtown stone, weighing up to five tons each, that summer to help build a breakwater in the area.

A new quarry was opened in 1958 a short distance northeast of the earlier quarry.

The Birchtown quarries were part of what is sometimes referred to as “The Shelburne Granite Area,” which the 1947 report describes as being approximately 120 square miles in area. “It includes the upper portion of Shelburne harbour and extends up the Roseway River approximately ten miles. Lake George and the Clyde River serve as approximate easterly and westerly boundaries respectively.”

Quarrying was done at a number of other locations in the Shelburne Granite Area, including:

Little Rocky Mountain, two miles of north of Shelburne, was the original black granite quarry in the area. Quarrying began shortly after World War I. However, “tombstones made of this rock proved a disappointment. Within 10 years monuments made of this rock weathered to a yellowish brown color and took on a pebbly scale. The scale is vegetable growth feeding on the decaying materials.”

A deposit of black granite was discovered at Robert’s Mountain around 1907 by William Townsend but the discovery was not made public until Townsend staked a claim on it in 1944. A small amount of quarrying was done during the summer of 1946 on the north side of the hill to determine the best location for ongoing operations and to obtain samples for polishing. However, quarrying stalled because the site, two miles south of Harper Lake, needed a three-mile road to be accessed by vehicles. The 1947 report said the 100-feet-tall hill was believed to be mostly black granite. “When polished the rock is quite dark and has a definite bluish cast.”

Andrew Bower opened a small quarry 250 yards southeast of Little Rocky Mountain in 1946. “The stone is an exceedingly fine-grained granite with a very pleasing texture.”

A small amount of quarrying was done on Reed’s Hill about three miles northwest of Shelburne. However, the site had challenging geology and was not worked long.

Quarrying was also done at Jordan Falls. However, “the rock is similar in all respects to that of Little Rocky Mountain, and proved useless for monumental purposes.”

Birchtown was settled by people of African ancestry who were loyal to the British during the American Revolution. The Black Loyalists were promised freedom and land in exchange for their loyalty. Founded in 1783, Birchtown was at that time the largest free settlement of Africans in North America and became a place of refuge for people of African descent escaping enslavement and difficult living conditions. However, due to adverse conditions, including inadequate supplies, discrimination and broken promises of assistance, many Black Loyalists left Birchtown in 1792 to settle in Sierra Leone, Africa.