History
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An engraving of a photograph of the Grand Falls c. 1890
The falls were a significant landmark for local Indigenous peoples. The Innu believed that to look on these awe-inspiring falls meant death and maintained a strong taboo against visiting into the early 20th century.
In 1839, a team led by the explorer and trader John McLean—seeking a navigable route between Fort Chimo in northwest Labrador and Fort Smith on Lake Melville in southeast Labrador for the Hudson's Bay Company—were the first Europeans to discover the area. McLean was mostly annoyed that the falls presented an obstacle to a direct river route and meant retracing his path back north, but he was still overwhelmed by the falls' majesty.
Fifty years later, the unmapped falls were sought as part of an 1891 scientific expedition to Labrador consisting of alumni and faculty from Bowdoin College in Maine. On July 26 a four-man party embarked in canoes heading westwards from the expedition's schooner Julia Decker, but injury forced two of them to turn back. Austin Cary and Dennis Cole continued onwards; after a 300-mile (480 km) trek they reached the falls by foot on August 13. They named the canyon at the foot of the falls "Bowdoin Canyon", after their alma mater. They also named a nearby peak Mount Hyde, after Bowdoin president William DeWitt Hyde. In 1894, Albert Peter Low of Canada's Geological Survey reached the falls.
Plans were made as early as 1915 to divert the river above the falls for power generation, but they were abandoned as unfeasible at the time. Following the development of the iron ore mines in western Labrador and the construction of the Quebec North Shore and Labrador Railway in 1954, the project became workable and surveys and planning began. Construction on the Churchill Falls Generating Station started in 1967 and, in 1970, almost all of the Churchill's water was diverted into a reservoir upstream of the falls. Only a small stream remains; even when the reservoir hits its maximum water levels, usually a once-a-decade event, the controlled release over the falls amounts to only about 10% of the falls' former flow.
