The Harbour
With a significant population for the time, commercial interests later focused upon the fishing industry, particularly lobsters and herring, but also potatoes. Merchants established trade connections in the West Indies and Cuba, bringing back molasses, fruit and the ‘occasional’ keg of spirits. Lobster and fish processing plants sprang up at several locations as the industry expanded and a cannery offered an alternative to salt fish. The 1880 Atlas of Prince Edward
Island indicates two general merchants operating in Murray Harbour plus two forges, a carriage shop, a harness shop, a lime kiln, a tannery and a shoemaker. A starch factory, opened in 1885, relied heavily upon the port to ship the product up and down the seaboard.

Coastal shipping between Island ports became an active enterprise by the middle of the 19th century. Murray Harbour was a regular weekly stop for the steamer Electra, followed by the Enterprise in the early 20th century, on their routes between Georgetown, Charlottetown, and Pictou. Photographs record a busy harbour full of local fishing schooners and merchant vessels. Coal, coming largely from Sydney, became a significant import when the railway depot was established in Murray Harbour in 1905. It arrived at the wharf and was hauled in horse-drawn to an eight hundred ton storage building kept stocked for the steam trains, until their demise in 1948. Murray Harbour continued as one of the busiest ports on the east end of the Island well into the 20th century, A federal freight shed was built near the wharf for agricultural produce. A federal freight shed was built near the wharf

All through the decades in good and tough times, fishing has been and still is an industry that sustains the community. The ground fishery was strong until destroyed by draggers in the 1950s and 1960. In the last 25 years, lobster has been the principal catch landed at local processing plants and the port continues to be filled with working vessels. Residents sometimes refer to the community simply as “the Harbour”; certainly an apt description of such a long heritage.