When Heather Davidson wrote a short history of Kentville for the Board of Trade in 1979, She asked why the town prospered after the railway arrived in the Annapolis Valley.
“Why Kentville? Why Here?” Davidson asked in the eight-page booklet on the town’s rise to prominence. This was a good question, but what also could have been asked is why Windsor and Wolfville were eliminated when a site for the railway’s headquarters was being considered.
At the time tracks were laid, compared to Kentville and Wolfville, Windsor was already an advanced mercantile and industrial centre with a substantial residential area. Kentville looked to Windsor, for example, on how to set up a water system for the fledgling town. For a short period, Wolfville was the railway’s headquarters, but only because a temporary office for the supervisor was set up there. In the Dominion Atlantic Railway history, Marguerite Woodworth suggests that Wolfville didn’t have land available to hold the station, roundhouse, machines shops, freight sheds and other sprawling facilities the railway required to operate.
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