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. History Grand-Pré was founded in about 1680 by Pierre Melanson and Pierre Terriot. Pierre Melanson, 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. Pierre Terriot was the son of Jehan born in Port Royale around 1654. Pierre Melanson was responsible for founding the parish of Saint-Charles des Mines while his friend, Pierre Terriot founded the parish of Saint-Joseph de la rivière aux Canards. 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 des Mines was formed. Queen Anne's War Raid on Grand-Pré (1704) During Queen Anne's War, New Englander Ranger Benjamin Church, burned the village and broke some of the dykes in the Raid on Grand Pré. In this raid, Church and his rangers got stuck on the mud flats of Baie Francais (Bay of Fundy), which gave the Mi'kmaq and Acadians time to position themselves to fiercely defend the village. They were eventually overwhelmed and Church burned the village and