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Eigg Mountain is high plateau (between 225 and 300 metres above sea level), part of the highlands of Antigonish County, Nova Scotia, Canada.
Originally used as winter hunting grounds by the Mi’kmaq people, Eigg Mountain was settled and farmed in the early nineteenth century by immigrants from Ireland and the Scottish Highlands.Laurie C. C. Stanley-Blackwell, and R. A. MacLean, Historic Antigonish: Town and County (Halifax, NS: Nimbus Pub., 2004), 9. The place takes its name from the Eigg in western Scotland where some of the first settlers originated.Raymond A. MacLean, History of Antigonish (Antigonish: Casket Printing & Publishing Co., 1976), 113. Farming conditions were difficult at this high elevation.Stanley-Blackwell, and MacLean, Historic Antigonish, 9. Winters were longer and the snow-cover deeper than in lowland areas.MacLean, History of Antigonish, 114. The soil was rocky and thin.The soils for the entire area are categorized as Thom catina, which Cann and Hilchey characterize as "usually shallow," and stony enough to be "a serious handicap to cultivation:" D. B. Cann, J. D. Hilchey, Agriculture Canada, and Nova Scotia Dept. of Agriculture and Marketing, Soil Survey of Antigonish County, Nova Scotia (Ottawa; Halifax: Agriculture Canada; Dept. of Agriculture and Marketing, 1978), 1953, 31-2. Crop failures were reported in the 1890s.MacLean, History of Antigonish, 114. The school was closed in 1914. The entire settlement was abandoned shortly thereafter. The history of Eigg Mountain settlement is documented on an interactive online map.
Eigg Mountain has been logged continuously since the eighteenth century,Ralph S Johnson, Forests of Nova Scotia, a History (Halifax: Four East, 1986), 64; B. E. Fernow, C. D. Howe, and J. H. White, Forest Conditions of Nova Scotia (Ottawa: Commission of Conservation, 1912). and logging is now the main economic activity there. People still hunt on Eigg Mountain as the Mi’kmaq did centuries ago; however the caribou are goneJohnson, Forests of Nova Scotia, 61. and the endangered mainland moose is now a protected species.Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources, "Mainland Moose (Alces alces americana),"
The term Eigg Mountain is also used to refer to a peak that rises above the Eigg Mountain plateau to an elevation of 321.9 metres (Co-ordinates: ) and is the site of a horizontal control point or triangulation station.The Geological Survey Map of 1886 (Part P, Volume II of Hugh Fletcher and Eugene Rodolphe Faribault, Report on Geological Surveys and Explorations in the Counties of Guysborough, Antigonish, Pictou, Colchester, and Halifax, Nova Scotia, from 1882 to 1886, (Montreal: Dawson brothers, 1887)) and the 1953 Nova Scotia Department of Lands and Forests Land Grant Map (Index Sheet no. 98) both us the term to refer to the plateau. The topographical map published by Natural Resources Canada in 1999 (Merigomish sheet 11/E9), uses it for the peak only.
/ref> In the summer people enjoy the area by hiking, cycling and exploring with all-terrain vehicles; in the winter by snowshoe, ski and snowmobile. A portion of Eigg Mountain was protected in 2003 as part of the Eigg Mountain-James River Wilderness Area.Nova Scotia Department Environment, "Eigg Mountain-James River Wilderness Area,"
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External links
Eigg Mountain Settlement History Project, http://people.stfx.ca/rbantjes/gis/txt/eigg/introduction.html
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