Transportation

Before the days of highways or railways, all travel was by water. Rowboats travelled between the peninsular villages or people walked on blazed trails. Later on rough dirt roads were used with horse and wagon or oxen and oxcart.

The earliest road was a crude trail into Halifax. In the 1750s, roads were cut that were 18 ft. wide that followed old cattle driving paths out of Halifax. It was only a strip from which trees had been cut down with a footpath between the stumps and poles laid across swampy areas. In winter primitive roads closed for weeks in spring and fall because of mud.

The Prospect Road was first cut about 1812. Between 1840 and 1845, construction of the St. Margaret's Bay Road began in Armdale and stretched to Chester. When rocks were blasted during road work, many of the homes suffered broken windows. It took 6 hours to get from West Dover to Halifax with horse and buggy in the late 1800s. It was paved in 1950.

Marjorie Tremain writes about coming from Halifax in the early days: "You came up the Bay Road to a house of Joseph McCleave and this was the first house on the Arm Hill. Then you turned into the Prospect Road where there was a house owned by an Umlah who operated a small farm with a few chickens. A slight incline known as Shoemaker's Hill named for a shoemaker by the name of Hebert Welsman. You travelled along aftere there on a fairly level stretch on which there was a cabin occupied by a Toher. Where the watershed property is now situation were two houses owned by Dave and Archie Drysdale, then several miles further along was Charlotte Drysdale's (nee Walsh from Prospect). At Charlotte's everyone put their horses, got a hot toddy and a meal and a pair of wool socks if needed. Next came the home of Joshua Emlah who travelled with the mail from Halifax. A level stretch known as the Long Bog came next before a house was passed at Hatchet Lake owned by William Umlah. You passed Hatchet Lake then down Christian's Hill into White's Lake where the only house at that time was owned by Pat Kerwick. Then along the way came houses owned by Charles Christian, his brother William and a Christian. The Prospect Bay turnoff is next and you proceed straight ahead to Cahill's Hill and on the left was the home of Michael Burke. A little along the right was the home of Dr. Tyle who married Lillie Redmond and this section was always known as Tyler's Patch."

The railways increased the influence and power of cities and competed with the local community craftspeople's products. In 1857 the Nova Scotia Railway, a government-built enterprise had been completed ten miles north out of Halifax along the shores to Bedford and made Bedford into a thriving village. There the horses and wagons with hay, lumber and produce came in from the countryside and got onto the rail cars to go to market in Halifax. The inns along the old wagon road into Halifax were to become deserted within a few years.

Dog sleds were also used. The bicycle was the preferred mode of travel in early 1900s. The Halifax South Western Railway was completed in 1905 and it ran from Halifax to Yarmouth. Cars started appearing in the villages after 1925. In Terence Bay, Flo Harrison remembers her parents hiring Richard Slaunwhite to take them to Halifax in his car. People would pay a dollar to get a lift into the city. Charles Coolen's Aunt Margaret Tanner of East Dover was the first woman to own and drive a car. She and her mother drove to Boston and back, a journey of about 700 miles.