Pinware

Pinware, a small community with an attractive sandy beach, is the site of the earliest aboriginal site in the province. Dating from around 8800 BP, it was discovered in the early 1970s by archeologists Robert McGee and James Tuck. The site, at a place called Pinware Hill was inhabited by Newfoundland and Labrador’s first people, descendents of Paleo-Indians. These people were just the first of many groups to take advantage of the excellent hunting and fishing along the Strait of Belle Isle. Pinware is also the location of a particularly abundant salmon river which must also have attracted the first people. Today the site sits farther from the water than it did when the first people came there due to the geological phenomenon of a rising coastline.

As there are no visible remains of the site today, and the dig has long been covered over, visitors must use their imagination to picture those early hunters who probably migrated over time from Nova Scotia and other maritime locations soon after the glacial ice shield had retreated.

 From its beginnings in the early 1800s the modern community of Pinware has never been large. It developed as a Catholic outport of Irish settlers who came to fish and catch seals. Prior to their arrival, the harbour whose name comes from the French “pied noir”, was used by French fishermen who left behind a large barking pot, which visitors can still see at Ship Head. Unfortunately, a lovely Catholic Church, built in 1910 was torn down in 1950, but artifacts from the church can be viewed at the Labrador Straits Museum near L’ Anse au Loup.

 Today the Pinware River Gorge is part of a provincial park and each summer it attracts avid salmon fishermen from all over the province and beyond.