Description of Historic Place

Melanson Settlement National Historic Site of Canada is the upland village fragment of a 17th- and 18th-century Acadian family farming settlement along the Annapolis River. It consists of a dyked terrace with subsurface archaeological remains, situated in the salt marshes of the Annapolis River.

Heritage Value

The Melanson Settlement was designated a national historic site of Canada in 1986 because its in-situ resources reflect the family communities in which the Acadians settled along the Dauphin (now Annapolis) River and undertook a form of agriculture unique in North America.

The heritage value of this site resides in its sense of place - the immediate visual link between its geographic properties and life in this location in Acadian times, and the clarity and comprehensiveness of the view imparted as well as in its in-situ resources from the Acadian period.

The settlement was established on the lower Annapolis River by Charles Melanson and Marie Dugas after their marriage in 1664. It was subsequently occupied by four generations of their family before the Acadian Deportation of 1755. Historically it consisted of the family village on an upland terrace, with cultivated fields on the vast adjacent dyked salt marshes.

Sources: Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada Minutes, November 1986 and June 1987.

Character-Defining Elements

Key elements that contribute to the heritage character of the site include:
- the cultural landscape of the Melanson settlement with its historic view planes of surrounding agricultural field systems, the vestiges of the Gilbeau-Melanson dykes, the adjacent salt marshes and Annapolis River;
- the upland terrace upon which the Melanson settlement village was located with its archaeological remnants of Acadian life;
- the found form, massing, and materials of the dyke supporting the upland terrace;
- the setting of the site among the salt marshes, isolated from modern development.