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Grand Pre, Nova Scotia

Grand-Pré
Community
Grand-Pré National Historic Site
Grand-Pré National Historic Site
Grand-Pré, Nova Scotia is located in Nova Scotia
Grand-Pré, Nova Scotia
Location of Grand-Pré in Nova Scotia
Coordinates: 45°03′43″N 64°10′32″W / 45.061814°N 64.175526°W / 45.061814; -64.175526
Country  Canada
Province  Nova Scotia
County Kings County
Established 1680
Electoral Districts   
Federal

Kings County
Provincial Kings County
Elevation 0- 92 m m (-302 ft ft)
Time zone AST (UTC-4)
 • Summer (DST) ADT (UTC-3)
Postal code(s) B4P
Area code(s) 902
NTS Map 021N08
GNBC Code DALZZ
Website Société Promotion Grand-Pré - The National Historic Site
Official name Landscape of Grand Pré
Type Cultural
Criteria v, vi
Designated 2012 (36th session)
Reference no. 1404
Region Europe and North America

Grand-Pré is a Canadian rural community in Kings County, Nova Scotia. Its French name translates to "Great/Large Meadow" and the community lies at the eastern edge of the Annapolis Valley several kilometres east of the town of Wolfville on a peninsula jutting into the Minas Basin surrounded by extensive dyked farm fields, framed by the Gaspereau and Cornwallis Rivers. The community was made famous by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem Evangeline and is today home to the Grand-Pré National Historic Site. On June 30, 2012, the Landscape of Grand-Pré was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.

Grand-Pré was founded in about 1680 by Pierre Mellanson, an Acadian settler who traveled east from Pierre Dugua, Sieur de Mons's original settlement at Port-Royal (see Annapolis Royal and the Habitation). Pierre, an Acadian of French Huguenot and English extraction, had arrived in Port Royal with Sir Thomas Temple in the 1650s when Acadia was under English control. The fertility of the soils and wealth of other resources in the area had been known to the French since the early part of the century when Samuel de Champlain, de Mont's cartographer, had surveyed the region. The settlers quickly employed their dyke building technology to the vast salt marshes; effectively reclaiming several thousand acres of productive farm land. The farms and the population grew quickly, making Grand-Pré the principal settlement in Acadia. Settlements spread from Grand Pré around the Minas Basin, collectively becoming known as Les Mines or Minas after the copper deposits surveyed by de Mons at the entrance to the Basin. By the mid-1680s the population was sufficient to support a church and the parish of Saint-Charles de Mine was formed.


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