Wine Harbour is a community located in Guysborough County along the Eastern Shore of Nova Scotia.
The bedrock is quartzite, which is almost entirely silicon dioxide with little more than trace amounts of nutrient-bearing minerals; consequently, the soils are infertile.
Many other exotic plant species remain confined to residents' gardens, often in raised beds or even discarded automobile tires to avoid the stones.
The Indian name was "Pebumkeegunech" which when translated to English means "fish spawning place" or "an outlet cut through the sand".
This was probably the family of John Walters, a native of North Carolina and a veteran of the American Revolutionary War who settled in Nova Scotia around 1811 or 1812.
The main reason for its vigorous growth was the discovery of gold in July 1861 by Katie Doody and Joseph Smith, Sr. (probably not the Mormon; probably descendant of William Ashmore Smyth of Smithfield NS) which was the beginning of a great gold boom which lasted until 1905.
The procedure began when the rocks were hoisted out of the ground by horses, put on wooden scowls and brought across the harbour, if the wind was favorable, to the Victoria Crusher which was on the then Thomas Cooper property.
At the peak of this gold boom there were ten crushers run by steam power using coal, which was brought from vessels from Sydney.
Wine Harbour has lost its gold mines, its factories, most of its fishing, many of its forests, a church and the majority of its people.