page_title: Wolfville
section_title: The English
hierarchical_section_title: Wolfville / History / The English
caption_attribution_description: Wolfville, Nova Scotia
context_page_description: Wolfville is a Canadian town in the Annapolis Valley, Kings County, Nova Scotia, located about 100 kilometres northwest of the provincial capital, Halifax. The town is home to Acadia University and Landmark East School.
  The town is a popular tourist destination. Amazing views of Cape Blomidon, the Bay of Fundy and Gaspereau Valley bring people to the town, as well as the growing wine industry. The town is the home base for the Magic Wine Bus, a bus that takes tourists from winery to winery in the surrounding area. The downtown portion of Wolfville has long been acclaimed as a "bustling little bubble", it has a vibrant nightlife as it is speckled with lively pubs and bars. Cute cafes and shops also fill the picturesque strip. Wolfville is also home to the Acadia Cinema Cooperative, a non-profit organization that runs the local movie/performance house. In the past few years, several Victorian houses in Wolfville have been converted to bed and breakfast establishments.
context_section_description: Around 1760, the British government in Nova Scotia made several township plots of land available in the Annapolis Valley for colonization by English settlers. Horton Township was created in the Grand-Pré/Wolfville Area. Because of pressure on agricultural lands in New England, Anglophone farmers moved north in search of fertile land at a reasonable price. It is thought that between 1760 and 1789, more than 8,000 people known as New England Planters emigrated to the land around the Annapolis Valley. In 1763, there were 154 families living in the area of Horton Township. 
  The New England Planters set up a primarily agricultural economy, exporting cattle, potatoes, and grain, and later apples, as well as developing lumbering and shipbuilding. They settled and re-used the same dyke-lands as the Acadians had used before them, repairing and later expanding the agricultural dykes. They developed a major expansion in 1808, the three-mile-long Wickwire Dyke, which connected the Wolfville and Grand Pre dykes. This allowed the agricultural development of an additional 8,000 acres. The town site for Horton was initially surveyed in the Grand-Pré area at Horton Landing near the mouth of the Gaspereau River.  However, the town developed around the sheltered harbour on the Cornwallis River at Wolfville, at first known as Mud Creek.
  The first official record of a Baptist church in Canada was that of the Horton Baptist Church (now Wolfville), established on October 29, 1778. The church was established with the assistance of the New Light evangelist Henry Alline.  The Baptist movement remained strong in the area. In 1838 Acadia University was founded as a Baptist college.
  In 1830, the town of Mud Creek changed its name to Wolfville, in honour of Elisha DeWolf, the town's postmaster at the time. In the mid-19th century, Wolfville was renowned as the world's smallest port.  The town became part of Canada with Confederation in 1867. 
  The Windsor and Annapolis Railway arrived in 1868, later becoming the Dominion Atlantic Railway. Wolfville became a seaport devoted principally to the export of apples from the orchards of the fertile Annapolis Valley. Wolfville Harbour was also a terminus of the MV Kipawo ferry, the last of a long succession of ferries that connected Wolfville, Kingsport and Parrsboro for 200 years. The harbour, which empties twice a day due to the high tides of the Bay of Fundy, was once described by Robert Ripley as the smallest in the world. On March 20, 1893, the Town was incorporated, with Dr. E. Perry Bowles elected as its first mayor.
  In 1985, the town was declared a nuclear free zone. Wolfville was declared Canada's first fair trade town on April 17, 2007. In May 2016, Wolfville was designated as the third Cittaslow in Canada.
caption: Wolfville, 1897
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