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Tributers
E. Percy Brown and the Brookfield Mine
Barachois
Nova Rich Mines
Shad Bay Treasure Hunt
Montague 1937 Accident
Father Lanigan’s “Prospect”
George V. Douglas
The Stewart Brothers
Goldboro
Moose River's Touquoy Mine
Camerons Mountain
Jim Campbells Barren
Stanburne's Puzzling Gold Mine
Pockwock
Beaverbank Lake
Banook Mining Company
Deep Gold Mining
Wellington
Arsenic and Gold
Dynamite
War of Words
King of the Klondike
Oliver Millett
Kempt Gold Mining Company
Carleton
The Memramcook Fiasco
Love and Gold in Oldham
Montague 1893 Disaster
Central Rawdon Consolidated Mines
Cochrane Hill
Amateurish Early Gold Mining
Sable Island Gold
The Sea Wolf
Trueman Hirschfield
Alexander Heatherington
Prospector Joe Cope
Killag Quicksand
George W. Stuart
Wellington
Billy Bell
Cooper Jim Mine
South Branch Stewiacke
Walter Prest
Lake Charlotte
Acadia Powder Mills Company
The Ovens Anticline
Moose River Anticline
Avon Mine Explosion
Montague
Waverley Claims Dispute
Avon River
Moose River Disaster
Mooseland Scam
New York and Nova Scotia Gold Mining Company
Rosario Siroy and the South Uniacke Gold District
Blockhouse
Killag Gold District
Miller Lake
Baron Franz von Ellershausen
Mooseland: Nova Scotia’s first Gold Discovery
United Goldfields of Nova Scotia
Pleasant River Barrens Gold District
Lochaber Gold Mining Company
Rawdon Gold Mines
MacLean Brook
Gold in Clayton Park?!
Forest Hill
Meguma vs. Placer Gold
Uniacke
Voglers Cove
Gold River
Moosehead
Goldenville
Westfield
Indian Path
Harrigan Cove
Centre Rawdon
Nova Scotia’s Gold Mining History
WWII Gold
Middle River Gold District
Early Gold Discoveries
Halifax 1867
Paris Exhibition 1867
Mining and Tourism
An Act relating to the Gold Fields
Molega Gold District
Brookfield Gold District
Gays River
Halifax Gold
Caribou Gold District
Renfrew Gold District
Oldham Gold District
Whiteburn Gold District
Country Harbour Mines
Waverley Gold District
Robert Henderson and Klondike Gold
George Mercer Dawson
Cow Bay Gold District
Lake Catcha Gold District
Wine Harbour Gold District
Indian Path
Gold was discovered in Indian path, Lunenburg County, in 1862. Several veins were uncovered and a shaft was sunk 25 feet on one of them. A rock crusher was built and operated by means of waterpower.
Additional prospecting was done in 1869 and ten or twelve leads, varying in width up to 5 feet, were exposed. A test of 25 tons of ore showed that it could be crushed at a profit of a shilling per ton.
Another discovery in 1869 was that a great deal of gold had ended up in the tailings as waste instead of being recovered in the milling process. This was a common problem in that era as significant expertise was required to do the processing effectively.
Exploration continued in 1870 but work in the area declined afterwards.
In 1876, a small amount of quartz was crushed but only three ounces of gold were produced. In 1884, a 10-shamp mill was built and run by steam power. The mine was pumped out but no production was reported.
In 1896, A. J. Cowie of Halifax rebuilt the 1876 mill and crushed a few tons of ore, but the results were not encouraging and the work stopped. Cowie also reported producing five ounces of gold at The Ovens that year.
This was presumably Doctor A. J. Cowie, a medical doctor whose life reads like an old-fashioned adventure novel. He grew up in Liverpool, Nova Scotia, around his father’s businesses in lumber, milling, a tannery and ships. He studied at King’s College and went to sea on one of his father’s ships in his late teens. He travelled to the West Indies, England and South America. He survived a rogue wave that nearly sank the ship on an otherwise calm day. After the crew limped into Rio de Janeiro, he caught yellow fever there.
After passing the exam to qualify as a First Mate, he decided instead to go back to school and study medicine – still only 21 years old!
He had “considerable microscopic training at King’s College” and is believed to have been the first Halifax doctor to use a microscope for medical work. He practiced medicine with Charles Tupper, who was later Premier of Nova Scotia and Prime Minister of Canada.
In 1861 Cowie was one of two doctors in Halifax who served as City Vaccinators during the smallpox epidemic (the other was a Dr. Gossip). People with smallpox were the first patients at Halifax’s Victoria General Hospital, which opened that year. Cowie practiced medicine for 55 years before retiring.
While Cowie was not very successful at gold mining, it was another interesting activity in a life well-lived!
Some prospecting was later done at Indian Path for Charles Uniacke Mader, a wealthy merchant and a Member of the Legislative Assembly from 1904-11. He was the owner of Mader’s Wharf, a Mahone Bay landmark that has been home to many businesses over the years.
Only the one vein was ever worked at Indian Path and the deepest pit was only 35 feet, a very modest depth. A total of 50 ounces of gold were produced, 38 of them in 1869.
Indian Path was active again in the 1930s but with a focus on tungsten this time, which was discovered northeast of the gold mine. When WWII started, strategic metals like tungsten were in high demand. Tungsten was used as filaments in lightbulbs. Because it is the metal with the highest melting point (3,422 °C), it was also used in plane engines and munitions.
A 76-metre shaft was sunk and a processing plant built. Mining continued until 1943 when the known tungsten zones were becoming depleted and as the wartime need for tungsten diminished.
It remains a bit of a geological mystery why some Nova Scotia gold districts have significant amounts of tungsten associated with them and other districts do not. Given the global interest in Nova Scotia’s gold deposits, maybe future exploration will help us better-understand our potential for tungsten.