McAdam, New Brunswick
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McAdam (2001 pop.: 1,513) is a Canadian village in southwestern New Brunswick.
McAdam was founded as City Camp in the 1850s as a small hamlet in the upper St. Croix River watershed supported by the lumber industry. Its name is derived from the numerous lumber camps in the area.
The community's destiny was changed in the 1860s when its geographic location made it into a regional railway hub for southwestern New Brunswick.
The St. Andrews and Quebec Railway (SA&Q) had originally surveyed a line from the port of St. Andrews across the southern portion of the Saint John River watershed to a junction with the Grand Trunk Railway in Richmond, Quebec during the mid-1830s. Construction was started but did not proceed for several decades due to the unresolved border dispute with the United States (the resulting Webster-Ashburton Treaty of the 1840s did not allocate the Saint John River watershed to the United Kingdom.
Construction of the railway only restarted in the early 1860s under the name of the New Brunswick and Canada Railway (NB&C) and was built as a narrow gauge railway, passing through City Camp and Canterbury reaching Woodstock in 1867. The NB&C line was later absorbed into the New Brunswick Railway (NBR) system and extended further up the Saint John River valley to Edmundston.
In 1869, the European and North American Railway (E&NA) western extension opened its main line from Saint John to Vanceboro, Maine, passing through City Camp and forming a junction with the NB&C. This junction was called McAdam Junction and the NB&C line was converted to standard gauge in the 1880s. The E&NA was absorbed into the NBR as well.
In 1889, the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) completed its International Railway of Maine across northern Maine for a direct eastern extension of its transcontinental mainline from Montreal to Saint John, purchasing the entire NBR and making McAdam a major CPR junction and division point. A large roundhouse and yard were built and expanded, and a major passenger station built of granite was constructed to serve passengers changing trains to head to CPR's The Algonquin resort in St. Andrews. A 30-room hotel above the station served to house guests requiring overnight waits for train connections.
During the latter half of the 20th century, rail traffic declined, to the point where CP Rail sold or abandoned its lines east of Montreal in 1995 - 3 of the lines running through McAdam were sold to New Brunswick Southern Railway and a 4th line running north to Woodstock was abandoned. The station saw its last passenger train on December 17, 1994 when VIA Rail's Atlantic was discontinued.
The historic station fell into disrepair due to lack of maintenance during the late 1990s. Local fundraising efforts in recent years have seen the building restored and renovated into a museum.
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