The Labrador Trough

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The Labrador Trough is a geological sequence extending through western Labrador. It consists of sedimentary and volcanic rocks deposited here two billion years ago, at a time when much of Labrador was covered by a shallow sea.

As early as the 1870s, Jesuit missionary Father Louis Babel had noted iron deposits in Labrador West. Between 1892 and 1896 Canadian geologist Albert Peter Low explored and mapped the area. It was in 1936 a major body of iron ore was mapped near here, at Carol Lake and Little Wabush Lake. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s numerous deposits in the Labrador Trough were surveyed and in 1954 the Iron Ore Company of Canada (IOCC) completed the Quebec North Shore and Labrador Railway, to ship ore from a mine at Schefferville, Quebec.

In 1958 IOCC decided to extend the railway into western Labrador, in order to exploit the deposit at Carol Lake. Initially the mine and town site were known as the "Carol Project."