Port Nelson, Manitoba

Port Nelson is on Hudson Bay, in Manitoba, Canada, at the mouth of the Nelson River. Its peak population in the early 20th century was about 1000 people but today it is a ghost town. Immediately to the south-south east is the mouth of the Hayes River and the settlement of York Factory. Note that some books use 'Port Nelson' to mean the region around the mouths of the two rivers.

Port Nelson was named by Thomas Button who wintered there in 1612. "August 15, 1612 Captain Thomas Button seeking for a harbour on the west coast of Hudson's Bay in which he might repair damages incurred during a severe storm, discovered the mouth of a large river which he designated Port Nelson, from the name of the master of his ship whom he buried there."

It was during the period from 1660-1870 when many Assiniboine and Swampy Cree trappers and hunters became middlemen in the Hudson’s Bay Company fur trade economy in Western Canada that the Cree began to be referred to as "three distinct groups: the Woodland Cree, the Plains Cree, and the Swampy Cree (Ray 1998)." The Swampy Cree and the Assiniboine used the Nelson River, along with the Hayes River, as the main inland routes to the great inland lake, Lake Winnipeg. Although the Nelson is much larger, the Hayes was a better route into the interior. Therefore, most of the Hudson's Bay Company's trade was done from York Factory on the Hayes, which was built in 1684. In 1694-95 Father Marest recorded "The Assiniboine are thirty-five or forty days journey from the fort [Port Nelson]."

"For more than two hundred years, from two to five sailing vessels, on an average, frequently with war ships conveying them, have sailed annually from Europe and America to Port Nelson, or other ports in Hudson's Bay and returned with cargoes the same season via the only available route, Hudson's Straits."

In the early 1900s, the Government of Canada felt that a major harbour on Hudson Bay was needed for shipping grain from central Canada. In 1912 Port Nelson was selected as the site over Churchill (at the mouth of the Churchill River) to become the terminus of the Hudson Bay Railway, the construction of which had already begun from The Pas in 1910.

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Wikipedia