Deer Lake: Located on the eastern end of Deer Lake, northwest of Grand Lake, on the Great Northern Peninsula, the town of Deer Lake was incorporated in 1950.

Deer Lake is a relatively "recent" place name, as originally it was known, according to Hamilton (1996) as Nicholsville, so named after its first settler, George Nichols and his wife Kathy, who came from Cape Breton in the early 1890s and settled at the north end of the Lake.

According to material presented in the ENL, in 1923 construction of dams and a power house began for the purpose of supplying energy to the new pulp and paper mill that had been built in Corner Brook.

Needing space for housing, workers began to build houses along the road to Nicholsville, and by the early 1950s there were 30 families living there.

While Nicholsville is shown as a separate community on the map, for census purpose it falls under the Census subdivision of "Deer Lake".

In 2016 the population of Deer Lake was 5,249 making it one of the bigger communities in Newfoundland. It is a growing community, having increased in population size by 5.1% over the 4 years since the 2011 census, when there were 4,995 residents.

Deer Lake is described on many websites as the "Gateway to the Great Northern Peninsula" and it is the closest major town to Gros Morne National Park so it is often a place where tourists en route to the park stock up. The lake itself is 27 km (16.8 mi) long by 1.5 km (0.93 mi) wide.

It is said that the lake was named after the migratory deer who were thought to routinely crossed the lake as they headed south annually from the north to the interior when weather turned foul.

However, there are some that suggest that the animals that were actually in the area were not deer, but rather caribou (Hamilton, 1996).

According to Wikidiff, the difference between deer and caribou, is that a deer is a ruminant mammal with antlers and hooves of the Cervidae family or one of several similar animals from related families of the order artiodactyla, while caribou are any of several north American subspecies of the reindeer, Rangifer tarandus.

Used with permission from "Uncovering the Origin of 1001 Unique Place Names in Newfoundland and Labrador" 2021 Jennifer Leigh Hill

Address of this page: http://nl.ruralroutes.com/DeerLakeNL