Toponymie | Canton de Potton | Place Names

One would think this name needed no description – but not so!  Originally it was a descriptive term meaning “donkey's back”, which itself is a bit of an enigma in the present context!  Actually, a “hogs back” has precise meaning in geological terms.  It designates a particular type of rectilinear ridge, the spine of which is impervious rock, with steep outcroppings.  The name comes from the ridge resembling the high, knobby spine between the shoulders of a hog (or donkey!).  It is presumed that the above explanation would apply to the mountain found in Potton.  Hogsback in Potton has also been called Ridge Mountain.

Another Hogsback is to be found in the Gaspé region of Quebec.  It is unlikely however that the Hogs Back of Gaspé fame had a copper mine at its foot, as Potton can legitimately claim. 

From 1900 to 1915, the Lake Memphremagog Mining Company extracted 800 tonnes of the mineral from shafts located on “the northwest slope of Hogsback Mountain”.  “The development of this property consisted of a vertical shaft eighty feet in depth.  The ore varied in the amount of copper it carries, from one to nine percent.”^[1]

William Bullock's Beautiful Waters, Volume II gives an interesting description of “The Secrets of Hogback Mountain”, wherein he states that it was the determination of one C. R. Moore “that the most and richest of the diversified ores were centered on the John Burbank property in the recesses of one of those two elevations that go to make up Mt. Elephantis and known as Hogback”.  “(…) it had been proven that the ores of Hogback were particularly sulphurous (…) that when exposed to the sun the fumes were strong enough to choke anyone breathing them (…).”  Bullock notes that it was a George Smith “who was then owner of the Potton mining property, (and of) the mining rights.”^[2]  Mr. Moore evidently had a summer cottage at one time, “just south of the Leadmine light”.  Because of Leadville's proximity to the Canada-US border, it is possible Moore was an American, although Bullock reports Moore as having received his mining instruction at the Capleton mines near North Hatley.

Our publication Potton d'antan, Yesterdays of Potton, available at pottonheritage.org, shows the primitive site and some of the unidentified miners who worked it (Plate # 74).