Historic Views of Cape Blomidon

There is no mistaking the experience. When you find yourself looking at the the cliffs of Blomidon, you in a place of significance. You can almost feel the pull from the world’s highest tides that wash these shores twice a day. This is a place of Mi’kmaq legends and an international geological landmark.

Charles Lyell was impressed with the views of Blomidon. He sketched then illustrated Cape Blomidon in his Travels of North America and Nova Scotia published in 1845.

Charles Lyell was in Nova Scotia in the summer of 1842. When he visited the shores near Blomidon, he saw bird tracks in the Fundy mud and furrows in the sandstone.

Lyell’s notebooks from his visit to Nova Scotia are now available from the University of Edinburgh Archives. Notebook 103 includes his quick sketch that would become Fig. 16, shows and overall structures, including amygdaloid ‘trap’ (basalt) among the ‘drift’.

Digital redrawing and transcription of Charles Lyell Notebook 103, page 104-105, Fedak 2024. Original microfische scan provided by University of Edinburgh http://lac-archivesspace-live4.is.ed.ac.uk:8081/repositories/2/archival_objects/180261

Charles Lyell encouraged and collaborated with William Dawson, Nova Scotia’s famous geologist. The two met in Pictou during Lyell’s first visit in August 1842. In 1855, Dawson highlighted a scene of Blomidon in the first edition of his Acadian Geology, with a higher detail that depicts the majesty of the place and two geologists talking about rocks on the shoreline.

*Part of Cape Blomidon 1846*. *New Red Sandstone & Trap*. Drawn by William Dawson. *Acadian Geology*, 1855.

Blomidon Blow Me Down

Cape Blomidon was famous among those who visited Nova Scotia during the Age of Sail. Blomidon is a dominant feature in the Bay of Fundy landscape that connected the busy ports of Windsor, Hantsport, and Parrsboro to Boston. Several of the older maps identify the cape as “Blow Me Down”, respected by sailors traveling among the powerful tides during storms that roll in from the ocean.

Lithograph illustration of a towering seaside cliff and many sailboats in the harbour of large waves and white caps, a storm in the distance — **Cape Blow Me Down and Parrsboro** from Canadian Scenery Illustrated, Volume 2, From Drawings of W. H. Bartlett, 1842. Available on Archive.org.

Perhaps it was images like these that inspired the mind of Longfellow. Although he never visited Nova Scotia himself, Blomidon became internationally iconic landscape when “away to the northward Blomidon rose..” was the backdrop to Longfellow’s Evangeline published in 1847.

“away to the northward Blomidon rose..”

A Geologic Icon

With the development of photography, Blomidon’s fame as a geological landmark continued to grow. The far reaching horizon of the Minas Basin is a unique challenge for early photographers who captured scenic landmarks and sold framed tourism gifts and souvenir publications promoting railway transportation. Geology textbooks in New England used these photographs, when Blomidon literally became a textbook example of a wave cut platform.

Fig 57 from “Text-Book of Geology” by Prisson and Schuchert, 1920. In 1924, Goldthwait used the same image in his textbook “Physiography of Nova Scotia”.

Postcards from Evangeline

Amos Larson Hardy was the photographer who produced the image used in these geology textbooks. In 1906, the photograph was published in the tourism book “Evangeline Land” (Nova Scotia Archives).

This same photograph (low tide with sailboat) was one of several similar scenic views that were popular postcards until the late 1940s.

Three photographic postcards with similar views of Cape Blomidon. The upper is Hardy’s original photograph (1906), the middle is some years later with the same barn, and the bottom produced by Edison Graham shows a closer view but with a new barn. The growing orchard on the hill shows a progression of time. The vantage points of these photographs are from the roadway that winds along the shore.

Lyons Cove

Another popular vantage point to photograph Blomidon was from the top of the cliff at Lyons Cove. For his 1902 geology paper on the “Physiography of Acadia“, Reginald Daly used another photograph by Hardy that features a bicycle on the beach.

An image of Blomidon with bicycle from Plate 5 of the “Physiography of Acadia” published in 1902 by Harvard graduate and then Professor, Reginald A. Daly

Another Amos Hardy photograph from the same location with a horse and carriage on the beach was published in “Beautiful… Nova Scotia” tourism booklet published by the Yarmouth Steamship company in 1891 through 1901.

Image of “*Old Blomidon A Century Grim* Stands out to Stud the Deep ” published in “Beautiful… Nova Scotia, The Ideal Summer Land” 1901, from Internet Archive.

Postcards with these photographs were published through the 1940s.

Today, a recent photograph from Lyons Cove taken on a crisp spring morning shows active erosion continues along the shoreline. It’s still a place of wonder and beauty – a geological site washed twice a day by the world’s highest tides.

Comments

One response to “Historic Views of Cape Blomidon”

Elisabeth C Kosters

August 12, 2024

Wonderful, thanks! I see Blomidon from my house and the view is enchanting every day. But here is a special view: Blomidon behind Minas Basin chockfull of ice cakes. https://earthsciencesociety.com/2015/02/05/extreme-tides-and-winter-ice/
I wrote this blog post only 9 years ago, when it was unthinkable that we wouldn’t see Minas Basin full of ice each winter, but the last two winters we haven’t had any………..