Three Rock Cove, Port au Port Peninsula

Finished the Brigus cross-section and now doing some preliminary work on the next one: Three Rock Cove, on the Port au Port peninsula. Three Rock Cove was one of the early entries in my Howley research journal, I had read the official survey report for 1874 and for some reason the place stuck in my head.  

Here’s a quote from the report:  "At a place called Shoal Cove, about 8 miles from the extreme end of Long Point from the Gulf side, rocks of the lower carboniferous horizon form a narrow strip along the shore south westwards to a place called Three Rock Point where they run out into the sea.  These strata consist of red miceaceous sandstones and conglomerates with a few thin beds of limestone which contain carboniferous fossils.”

There was something in the “red miceacous sandstone” that Howley described that made me want to have a look at this place, perhaps it was the word “miceacous”, it has a textural ring to it. I could just picture these bands of rock dipping down to disappear underneath the waves, I really felt there was something there.

I did this journey as part of the NLAC project grant which also included an investigation of Long Point, (the tale told in an earlier post) and once again I was not disappointed in the structures found here.  Three Rock Cove is an easy area to access, a nice beach flanked the red striped cliffs.

 There was a lot of red sandstone and the unmistakable limestone but I was unsure of the conglomerate.  Even though my viewpoint was from the beach and not the water the formation did clearly end at Three Rock Point where the cliffs level out to the shore.  The red sandstone layer gets smaller and limestone dominates the cliffs until it runs out at the three rocks, thus named Three Rock Cove.

All along this shore there were huge slabs of limestone that I would have loved to bring home to make a patio in my backyard.  There were interesting rocks on the beach as well, some were polka dotted with limestone and reminded me of Pop art.  The cliff faces were the most interesting however, full of textures and patterns.

The painting I will be doing is from the image below, not exactly at Three Rock Point but a little further north along the shore where I felt the composition was more interesting. The layers seem to disappear underneath the beach.