New Minas was founded in the early 1700s by Acadians from the Grand Pre area, the largest of the settlements known as Les Mines or Minas after the French copper mines explored at Cape d'Or at the entrance to the Minas Basin in the 1600s. As the Minas settlement grew, families moved westward up the Cornwallis River and founded a new settlement which came to be known as 'New Minas'. The Acadian settlement was built beside a tidal island in the bend of the river, later known as Oak Island. They repeated the pattern of the Grand Pre settlement by connecting dykes to Oak Island to turn tidal marshland into productive farmland. The settlement grew to include a mill, chapel and burial ground at Oak Island. However the Acadians were expelled and the settlement was destroyed during the Bay of Fundy Campaign of the Acadian Expulsion in 1755. more... See more text