Sackville Wharf

Sackville Wharf is designated a Local Historic Place because it represents a change in the economic climate of Sackville from an agriculturally oriented community to a commercially oriented community.

The Old Wharf, constructed in 1840-41 at Dixon’s Landing, represents the growth of Sackville’s merchant community. The shopkeepers were looking to import products and export staples such as lumber, grindstones and building stones to the world. By the 1870s, the Chignecto Post was reporting that more wharf accommodation was needed. Only small schooners could lay in at the slips and those vessels of 200 tons and upward had only the end berth. Much activity was occurring at the Port of Sackville. A spur line of the Inter Colonial Railway was constructed in the 1870s to the public wharf and leased after 1884 by the N.B. and P.E.I. Railway. This local company had also purchased the private wharf from its owners, Mariners Wood and Ogden.

The construction of the New Wharf, which had been lobbied for over a period of thirty years, was completed in 1911. Much shipping business had been lost because of lack of proper wharf accommodation. Local folklore reports that a ship never tied up at the new wharf, as there was something wrong with the configuration of the structure. By the 1920s, the stretch of the Tantramar River, on which the old and new wharves were located, filled up with silt due to the result of a break through the neck leading to the Ram Pasture Marsh. The new wharf is land locked but an archaeological dig would unveil the complete structure of the 1911 wharf.

The remains of old dykes tie the area to the Acadian period and add to the overall heritage value of the site.