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Mountain Gap Inn is the oldest privately owned Inn in Nova Scotia. It all began when Ernest Alama Thornton was deeded the property in 1915.
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 He worked this territory as a commercial traveler for Fraser Thornton Ltd., of Cookshire, Quebec, a manufacturer of patent medicines. He established his residence on the grounds of Mountain Gap Inn, in Smith's Cove and eventually made it the sales headquarters for Olivine Emulsion (generic name of cod liver oil) and about 20 other items including salves, ointments and liniment. All were big sellers. Thornton was set apart for another reason as well: he was the only man in the village in the 20's and 30's wealthy enough to pay income tax!
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Mr. Thornton was known for his entrepreneurial prowess and reputedly would meet passengers disembarking from the Saint John Ferry in Digby and quickly fill limousines with guests and bring them to Mountain Gap Inn.
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 The building that houses our dining room is the original lodge, built in 1915, while the houses on the bluff and the cottages overlooking the Annapolis Basin date back almost as far. The pool-side units were added during the 1960's and the Westwood units in the early 70's. Our lounge is named after Captain Joshua Slocum, a Nova Scotian born seafarer who is famous for his single-handed circumnavigation of the world in 1895. Slocum's course took him from Massachusetts to Westport, Nova Scotia, across the Atlantic to Gibraltar, back across the southern Atlantic and around the tip of South America. He then traversed the Pacific and Indian Oceans, sailed past the Cape of Good Hope and then across the Atlantic again. On June 27, 1898 he arrived in Fairhaven, Massachusetts. A cairn commemorates Captain Slocum's historic voyage at Brier Island, 40 miles west of the Mountain Gap Inn.
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Click Here for some history about Nova Scotia.
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