Port au Choix: Located north of Ingomachoix Bay, the name of the town is believed to be of Basque origin, Portuchoa or Portichoa meaning "little harbour".

Overtime the name has been anglicized to Port au Choix. One of the larger communities on the peninsula (Pop. 789), Port au Choix, along with the towns of Port Saunders (Pop. 674) and Hawke's Bay (Pop. 314) are the major services centre of the Ingornachoix area.

The community is described as below on the NP website: The town of Port au Choix has a rich history in the fishing industry...The Port au Choix National Historic Site and the town are regarded as one of the richest archeological finds in North America.

Burial sites uncovered in the town in the 1960s and 1970 are evidence of early settlers from the Maritime Archaic Indian to the Groswater and Dorset Palaeoeskimos to the recent Indians.

Any visit would not be completed with out the archaeological dig at Phillip's Garden.

There are other sightseeing attractions including the Point Riche Light Station, the local heritage museum, the French Shore treaty site, and the Ocean Choice International Fish Plant.

Port au Choix still remains in close association with the sea and its cultural history. The population in 2016 showed an 8% decrease from that recorded in 2011 (i.e., 839).

Boutitout: Very little could be found out about Boutitout, however the Provincial Archaeology Office 2008 Archaeology Review, published by the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador Department of Tourism, Culture & Recreation February 2009 (Volume 7) a bit of information was obtained.

The site had been surveyed in 2003 and this review recounted more recent information that came from later exploration: Boutitout was identified as a French fishing station and Anglo-Irish livyer settlement [a 'livyer is defined in the DNLE as "a permanent settler of coastal Newfoundland (as opposed to migratory fisherman from England)].... in a 2003 survey.

Since we (research anthropologists/authors Peter E. Pope, Mélissa Burns, Stéphane Noël and Amy St. John] were in the area again, we thought it was worth revisiting, to examine the beach area around the stream and the circular rock inscription known locally as the sundial.

Making way across the shoreline to the beach was difficult, for this harbour is not easy to get around. We first assumed that the beach area around the stream was recorded as La crevasse, côte de l'est, in 1680. (In the early French fishery surveys, the word crevasse is usually used when there is a stream.)

Surface survey of the beach on both sides of the stream produced only a little Normandy CSW and a pipe stem, though we found relatively copious ballast flint and sampled some of that. There might be a wreck near here but the scarcity of other materials suggests that we may have misread the 1680 reference and that La crevasse, côte de l'est may in fact be an earlier name for the main fishing room on the northwest side of the inner cove -- a cove which is, after all, towards the east side as you enter the main harbour and adjoins the crevasse.

This major fishing room on the northwest side of the inner harbour was recorded as Contigue dans le fond, in 1832. We tested a number of small beaches without result, though we identified a roughly rectangular depression and two cobbled drying areas for fish.

In the rocky area inland and farther southwest, we revisited Feature 54, an inscribed circle in the bedrock, known locally as a sundial. It shows only one diameter line, with an N at the end pointing exactly true north.

This suggests that it is not a sundial but a surveyor's mark, calculated by observation at solar noon, determined from a chronometric table. This would be a 19th-century or late 18th-century procedure at the earliest. We also recorded several other adjacent rock inscriptions, dated 1856 and 1888.

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/PortauChoix