Stone chimney is all that remains of world

On the rocky shore of a quiet beach in Rockport, a large stone chimney looks ready to topple into the Bay of Fundy.

It seems out of place today, but the chimney is a remnant of an industry that dominated the upper Bay of Fundy in the 1800s, when quarries dotted the New Brunswick coast.

At low tide, sandstone was chiselled out of the banks or from the ocean bed, shaped and shipped to customers around the world to be used as building stone and grindstones.

Moncton historian and educator James Upham said the area would be considered remote now, but it used to be a busy community with homes, a school house and a general store.

"This place has almost returned to a state of being pristine," he said. "But at one time the quarry that we're actually standing in right now begins its story, that we know of, about 1814. Back then, grindstones were a huge deal."

Paul Bogaard, a member of the Tantramar Heritage Trust, has led tours to this Rockport beach.

At its peak, between 100 and 200 men would have worked at the quarry, carving out rocks that were about 1½ metres by 1½ metres, and a half-metre thick, he said.

"We're not talking about something you and I could lift up and carry," Bogaard said as he described the chunks of sandstone.

The sand grains that formed the stone had sharp edges that could be used for sharpening metal tools.

"It was of a special quality that was good for grindstone material," he said.

Bogaard recently edited a book released by the Tantramar Heritage Trust about the grindstone industry in the Cumberland Basin.

According to Upham, the stone that came out of the area was well-known, with one provincial geologist in the 1840s referring to it "as some of the very finest sharpening stone in North America."

The chimney that overlooks the beach was part of the engine that powered a machine called a steam derrick.

"What we have there is the physical remainder of what is probably the first steam derrick in New Brunswick, in what's going to become Canada," said Upham.

Until the steam derrick arrived, stone was moved with the power of horses, men, the tides or a combination of all three.

"And that is literally backbreaking labour," Upham said. "So this is the application of the industrial revolution into stone harvesting in Canada … memorialized in a chimney that is probably going to fall over pretty soon."

The steam derrick worked like a crane, with a large post in the ground and guy wires stabilizing it, said Bogaard.

Not only could the derrick lift large stones, but cables and pulleys were used to move wooden trolleys loaded with the stones.

"Just a flatbed with four iron wheels that would run on the small rail lines they laid out."

While the cliff where the chimney sits has eroded over time, Bogaard can still see the foundation stones of the building that surrounded it. If you look, he said, you can see where the boiler was that fuelled this steam engine.

Stone from the quarries in the area was also known to be very good building stone.

"Whole cities are built out of this ridge and the ridge next to it and this whole region," said Upham.

Bogaard points out that part of the reason the stone travelled so far, was that the quarries were on the shoreline, making it relatively easy to get it onto boats. Inland quarries in the area didn't take off in the same way until the railway was built.

"The stone from Rockport and Wood Point — that was carted down to New England and built a lot of the big brownstone buildings in Boston and New York," Bogaard said.

Before that, there are records of Acadians using smaller stones in the area as grindstones on their farms as far back as the 1760s.

"What the Acadians had discovered is we can go off on these reefs that are exposed at low tide, and chip out a stone just with hand picks, and shape it round and put it on a frame after you've hauled it back to your farm," he said.

Farther up the coast at Slack's Cove, there was another quarry, where a coffer dam was built to keep the ocean out so workers could chisel stone even at high tide.

The Rockport quarry operated between 1814 and 1862, along with many others in the upper Bay of Fundy.

Bogaard said grindstones from the area would eventually also be used in New England "to make and shape and sharpen bayonets" and to smooth gun barrels and canons in the 1700s.

Today, all that's left of an industry that shipped thousands of tons of grindstone and employed thousands of workers is the stone chimney in Rockport, on a "tiny precarious outcrop which is eroding on a daily basis," said Upham.

"It's an absolutely fascinating place and just one of hundreds of these kinds of places that are just sitting around — right out in the open — waiting for us to notice them."

With files from Khalil Akhtar

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