Battery features a small saltwater beach (unsupervised), an interpretive display, picnic area with ocean frontage, and 3 kilometres /1.8 miles of hiking trails.

In 1650, La Rochelle merchant Nicholas Denys took possession of Saint-Pierre and encouraged the fur trade with local members of the Mi'kmaq Nation who used the isthmus as a canoe portage route between the Atlantic Ocean and Bras d'Or Lake.

In addition to establishing a fur trading post, Denys later used the isthmus as a "haulover road" for portaging small sailing ships from Bras d'Or Lake to the Atlantic and vice versa.

Nicolas Denys was here between 1650–1669 and then Cape Breton remained unsettled by Europeans until the establishment of Louisbourg and re-establishment of Fort Dauphin (Englishtown, Nova Scotia) and Saint Peters 1713–1758.

France began moving some Acadian colonists to Île Royale (present-day Cape Breton Island) to populate this remaining outpost of French Acadia.

Port Toulouse—named after Louis Alexandre, Count of Toulouse—was created by Jean-Baptiste Hertel de Rouville near the 17th-century location of the fortified community of Saint-Pierre as a logistics base and supply centre for the Fortress of Louisbourg.

Along with Saint-Pierre, the French also established Fort St. Anne at present-day Englishtown as the other garrison on Île Royal to support the Fortress of Louisbourg.

In August 1752 during Father Le Loutre's War, the schooners Friendship of Halifax and Dolphin of New England were seized and 21 prisoners held for ransom by Mi'kmaq at St.

Boishebert brought back a large number of Acadians from the region around Port Toulouse to the security of his post at Beaubears Island on the Miramichi River.

(On 13 August 1758 French officer Boishebert left Miramichi, New Brunswick with 400 soldiers, including Acadians from Port Toulouse, for Fort St. George (Thomaston, Maine).

Local residents rehabilitated Denys's old "haulover road", laying wood skids for portaging small sailing ships across the isthmus.

The route through Bras d'Or Lake was considered a much shorter and safer voyage to Sydney than travelling around the exposed southern coast of Cape Breton Island.