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Sugarloaf Mountain, Campbellton

Sugarloaf Mountain in Campbellton and Atholville is part of the Appalachian range. The mountain, located within Sugarloaf Provincial Park is 305 metres high. Geologists believe Sugarloaf Mountain was perhaps a volcano in the Late Devonian or at least the pipe feeding magma toward the surface. Its formation is associated with a period of crustal thinning that followed the Acadian Orogeny in the northern Appalachian Mountains. According to the Mi'kmaq, Koluskap created Sugarloaf Mountain. A group of giant beavers had dammed the Restigouche River, blocking the salmon from their spawning grounds and depriving the Mi'kmaq of their food source. Koluskap flung the leader of the giant beavers and when the beaver landed it turned into rock and became Sugarloaf Mountain. 


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Many of the pink coloured rocks seen road outcrops in Campbellton and Atholville are rhyolite, lava of similar composition to granite. Rhyolite is an extrusive igneous rock. It erupts at the surface and cools quickly.  Granite is an intrusive igneous rock that cools slowly below the surface of the Earth.