Katherine Bickford

A drone-powered aerial view of a field in Hortonville, Nova Scotia

First known as Horton Landing, Hortonville was surveyed as the intended townsite for the New England Planters Horton Township settlement. However, the town development gravitated instead to Wolfville, further to the west, and Hortonville remained as an agricultural area.

The Windsor and Annapolis Railway, later the Dominion Atlantic Railway, built a bridge across the Gaspereau River at Hortonville in 1869 (re-built in 1911-1912), followed by a station, which further developed agriculture and began tourism in the area.

In 1924, the Dominion Atlantic Railway deeded a plot of land beside the tracks at Hortonville to the Acadian Memorial Society to erect an iron memorial cross at what was believed to be the site of the deportation. In 2005, the railway assisted in moving the cross to a site owned by Parks Canada, closer to the river, established by more recent research as the actual deportation site.