The town's name was given by French military forces who founded the
Fortress of Louisbourg and its fortified seaport on the southwest part
of the harbour, in honour of Louis XV. The French fortress was
demolished after its final capture in 1758 and the site was abandoned
by British forces in 1768.
Subsequent English settlers built a small fishing village across the
harbour from the abandoned site of the fortress. The village grew
slowly with additional Loyalists settlers in the 1780s. The harbour
grew more accessible with the construction of the second Louisbourg
Lighthouse in 1842 on the site of the original French lighthouse
destroyed in 1758. A railway first reached Louisbourg in 1877, but it
was poorly built and abandoned after a forest fire. However the
arrival of Sydney and Louisburg Railway in 1894 brought heavy volumes
of winter coal exports to Louisbourg Harbour's ice-free waters as a
winter coal port. The harbour was used by the Canadian government ship
Montmagny in 1912 to land bodies from the sinking of the RMS Titanic.
Incorporated in 1901, the Town of Louisbourg was disincorporated when
all municipal units in Cape Breton County were merged into a single
tier regional municipality in 1995.
[edit] Name Pronounced "Lewisburg" by its largely
English-speaking population, the present community has been identified
by slightly different spellings over the years by both locals and
visitors. The town was originally spelled Louisburg and several
companies, including the Sydney and Louisburg Railway adopted this
spelling. On 6 April 1966, the Nova Scotia House of Assembly passed
"An Act to Change the Name of the Town of Louisburg" which
resulted in the town changing its official name to the original French
spelling Louisbourg.
