The lands surrounding Bedford Basin and Halifax Harbour had been
traditionally used for the seasonal summer encampment of
Mi’kmaq people when Europeans arrived in the 1700s. By the
mid to late 1880s, there were only small pockets of Mi’kmaq
left in the harbour and basin area, including Tufts Cove and Turtle
Grove in North End Dartmouth, south of Wrights Cove. After European
settlement, Wrights Cove (first known as Burnside) was initially
used as a residential area. It was on the periphery of marine
industrial uses in the harbour until the twentieth century, when
military and marine industrial uses came to dominate. The cove
itself was named after the family of George Wright, a Tufts Cove
native and a wealthy businessman who was lost on the Titanic.
In 1749 Gerisham Tufts arrived in Halifax and received a 1,000
acre land grant in the current Tufts Cove area. This grant may have
included portions of the present-day Wrights Cove area. His
children settled the land. The area to the north of Tufts Cove was
originally named Burnside by Duncan Waddell, who settled in the
area to farm the land near the present-day railway overpass. His
streamside cottage was named Burnside. Eventually his land was
subdivided and sold, and turned to industrial and military
uses.
Around 1910, the land on the southern shore of Wrights Cove (now
Cove Lane and Greenbank Court) was first developed for cottages by
Halifax residents. Access was by boat until Wrights Cove Road was
built to connect with Windmill Road in the 1940s.