Kingsburg, Nova Scotia

Kingsburg, Nova Scotia is a small community in Lunenburg County on the South Shore that is now mainly a vacation area.

The village is located at the end of Kingsburg peninsula by the villages of Rose Bay and Riverport. The closest major centre is Bridgewater. It also is not very far from Lunenburg. Kingsburg is located between two beaches: the popular Hirtle's Beach and the lovely, but usually deserted Kingsburg Beach. There are also three capes which have hiking trails (Gaff Point, Rose Head, Hell Point). Like all of Nova Scotia, the ocean is usually too cold to swim in, but Kingsburg has two large lakes and a number of smaller freshwater ponds that are popular swimming locations.

The village was settled by German settlers, with a land grant from King George lll of England on July 5th 1787 to five families. (Leonard Hirtle,John Mossman, Peter Knack, Christian Hartman and John Kayser] It was for many decades primarily a fishing community, and a fish packing plant was established there. The village grew to have a few hundred residents.

In the late twentieth century, with the widespread decline of small-scale Atlantic fishery, the packing plant closed and the fishing culture nearly disappeared completely. With little industry, the town's population collapsed and many of the buildings were abandoned and destroyed, leaving the town with only a few dozen full time inhabitants.

By the 1990s, however, the South Shore had become a major vacation destination. As other popular destinations such as Mahone Bay and Chester became crowded and very expensive, travellers turned to smaller locations like Kingsburg. Kingsburg with its beaches and quiet isolation became a prime location. The old houses were bought and restored, mostly by wealthy out-of-province cottage goers from Ontario and the United States. The empty land was also bought up and many new houses were built. Prices skyrocketed and land there is now worth over 200 000 Canadian dollars per acre ($50/m²).

One of the only detractions to Kingsburg's idyllic setting is the great amount of fog. It is perfectly possible to go for weeks, even in mid-summer, with only a few days of visible sun.