Hastings, Annapolis County

In 1905, the Davidson Lumber Company built a large mill, and a small town, Hastings, on the east side of Mill Lake, Springfield, employing 100 men. The mill was capable of turning out 190,000 board feet of lumber, and 50,000 lathes ( for plaster walls ) at day. To put this figures into context, there are no mills in Nova Scotia today that can match this production. And all driven by steam! They sawed all winter,
and the logs were thawed out by running steam pipes into the lake and boiling an entire cove!

Farmers often came by to scald pigs they had butchered, by throwing them into the lake!

A railway was built to another town, Crossburn, that also is now abandoned. The Davidson mill was burned to the ground in 1928, the usual fate for a steam mill. – Forrest Rand, Feb 24, 2003

Springfield & Hastings photos c. 1909