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.

The settlers quickly employed their dyke building technology to the vast salt marshes; effectively reclaiming several thousand acres of productive farm land.

[3] 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.

[4] 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.

The bread basket of the region, they raised wheat and other grains, produced flour in no fewer than eleven mills, and sustained herds of several thousand head of cattle, sheep and hogs.

Regular cattle droves made their way over a road from Cobequid to Tatamagouche for the supply of Fort Beauséjour, Louisbourg, and settlements on Île St. Jean (Prince Edward Island).

The British built Fort Vieux Logis in the area during Father Le Loutre's War, which was attacked by the Acadians and Mi'kmaq in the Siege of Grand-Pré.

[6] Acadians from Grand Pré were dispersed in many locations and some eventually returned to other parts of the Canadian Maritimes such as Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and New Brunswick.

A large town plot with a rectilinear street grid was laid between Grand-Pré and Horton Landing to the east, but the local farming population preferred to settle along the upland ridge in a spread out fashion, much like the previous residents of the area, the Acadians, had done.

[7] While agriculture remained Grand-Pré's major industry, the park made the community a tourism destination as well as a memorial to the Acadian people.

Evangeline Beach is a famous stopover for thousands of migrating shore birds and is also a fine vantage point for watching the ebb and flow of the world's highest tides.