Hauntingly beautiful coastal landscapes explain why the Labrador Straits is a popular place to visit in this province.

A summer ferry service crosses the straits from Newfoundland to Blanc Sablon, Quebec, just a few kilometers from the Labrador border. From there, an 85-km (53-mile) road leads along the coast through a wild countryside of high, barren hills, thinly carpeted by heath and wind-twisted spruce.

The Labrador Straits was an important steamship route in the mid-19th century. To aid navigation in the often treacherous waters, the Point Amour Lighthouse was built in 1854 near L’Anse-Amour. Now a Provincial Historic Site, this 30-m (109-ft) tower is the second-tallest lighthouse in Canada. Visitors can ascend the tower for stunning views of the Labrador coast.

Along the road to the lighthouse is a monument that marks the site of the Maritime Archaic Burial Mound National Historic Site, North America’s oldest burial mound, where a Maritime Archaic Indian child was laid to rest 7,500 years ago.

At the end of Rte. 510 lies Red Bay National Historic Site. Here visitors can take a short boat ride to an island where 16th-century Basque whalers operated the first factory in the New World. A tour around the island leads past the foundations of the shanties, shipworks, and cooper shops where as many as 1,500 men worked each season, rendering whale oil for lamps in Europe.

Attractions:

Red Bay National Historic Site

Route 510. (709) 920 2051.

Battle Harbour

Once considered the unofficial capital of Labrador (from the 1870s to the 1930s), Battle Harbour, a small settlement on an island just off the southern coast of Labrador, was a thriving fishing community during the late 18th and 19th centuries. In 1966, the dwindling population was relocated to St. Mary’s on the mainland, but all of the town’s buildings, many of which date back 200 years, were left standing, and in the 1990s the town was restored.

Today, visitors can tour the island and get a taste of the way life was in coastal Labrador a century ago.