Grand Pre, Nova Scotia
| Grand-Pré | |
|---|---|
| Community | |
Grand-Pré National Historic Site
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| Coordinates: 45°03′43″N 64°10′32″W / 45.061814°N 64.175526°W | |
| Country |
 Canada
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| Province |
 Nova Scotia
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| 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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