Beinn Bhreagh, generally pronounced "ben breeagh",[1] is the name of the estate founded by Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, which has become an unincorporated rural community located in Victoria County, Nova Scotia, Canada. It is located on a peninsula jutting into Cape Breton Island's scenic Bras d'Or Lake approximately 3 km (1.9 mi) southeast of the village of Baddeck forming the southern shore of Baddeck Bay.
The location was known to the Mi'kmaq as "Megwatpatek", roughly translated to "Red Head" and referencing the reddish sandstone rocks at the tip of the peninsula. The name "Beinn Bhreagh"—meaning "Beautiful Mountain" in Scottish Gaelic—is thought to have been given to the peninsula by the inventor of the telephone, Dr. Bell, who purchased approximately 600 acres (2.4 km2; 0.9 sq mi) on Red Head in the late 1880s.
In July 2005, the Nova Scotia Civic Address Project review changed the status of Beinn Bhreagh from a "generic locality" to a "community"; however, the estate is not open to the public. [2]
Wealthy from his successful invention and marketing of the telephone, inventor Alexander Graham Bell and his wife Mabel undertook a cruising vacation in 1885 along the coast of eastern North America with their intended destination being Newfoundland, in order to view a mining operation that Mabel's father had invested in. Along the way, due to the accidental grounding of their passenger boat, they serendipitously discovered Cape Breton's Bras d'Or Lake and were enthralled by their surroundings.
Its landscape, climate, and Scottish traditions and culture were reminiscent of his birthplace in Edinburgh, Scotland. The Bells lived increasingly on Beinn Bhreagh from about 1888 until Dr. Bell's death in 1922, initially only in the summer and then later often year-round.
Bell constructed a laboratory on this property, where he conducted experiments in powered flight and hydrofoil technology, among many other things. Some of his most notable accomplishments at Beinn Bhreagh included the first manned flight of an airplane in the British Commonwealth (by the AEA Silver Dart) in 1909, plus the HD-4, a hydrofoil boat designed by Frederick Walker Baldwin and Dr. Bell, and built at Beinn Bhreagh. Designed as a submarine chaser and powered by aircraft engines, their vessel set a world watercraft speed record of 71 miles per hour (114 km/h) in 1919, which remained unbroken for many years.
Dr. Bell and his wife Mabel were both buried atop Beinn Bhreagh mountain, on the estate, overlooking Bras d'Or Lake. The original Beinn Bhreagh estate remains in the hands of their many descendants and is not open to the public. However, "The Point", Dr. Bell's main residence on Beinn Bhreagh, built in 1893, is visible from the town of Baddeck, where the Alexander Graham Bell Museum is located. The Alexander Graham Bell Museum is on the Canadian Register of Historic Places.[3]
Alexander Graham Bell's father-in-law, Gardiner Greene Hubbard was the first president of the National Geographic Society and Bell was its second president. Bell's son-in-law Gilbert Hovey Grosvenor ran the National Geographic Society for many years, and his grandson, Melville Bell Grosvenor, and great grandson Gilbert Melville Grosvenor were editors of the National Geographic Magazine and Presidents of the Society. Perhaps as a result, both Beinn Bhreagh or Baddeck, the nearest town, are prominently displayed in National Geographic maps of the area, despite their relatively small size.