First Level Assessment-
Land use History of the Little River Watershed
Historical Mining
Mining Practices
There are records of mineral exploration and discovery in the watershed, but little evidence of significant subsequent development of these resources. Coal was noted along the Coverdale River (Johnston 1850; Monro 1855), but not much was said about its properties or location, other than an indication that the deposits were not thought to be large. In 1864 L. W. Bailey, a Professor of Chemistry and Natural History at the University of New Brunswick reported that “thin pieces of gold of considerable size” were found in an unnamed (perhaps not surprisingly) stream that is a branch of the Coverdale River, near Elgin Corner (Bailey 1864). The same year, in another document Bailey also describes bituminous shale in the upper reaches of Prosser Brook that he concludes is likely a local extension of the deposit from which Albertite was being extracted at Albert Mines (Bailey 1865). Thus, while there was an awareness of mineral resources, their extraction was not economically viable.
