Gros Morne National Park is a world heritage site located on the west coast of Newfoundland. At 1,805 km2 (697 sq mi), it is the second largest national park in Atlantic Canada; it is surpassed by Torngat Mountains National Park, which is 9,700 km2 (3,700 sq mi).
The park takes its name from Newfoundland’s second-highest mountain peak (at 806 m or 2,644 ft) located within the park. Its French meaning is “large mountain standing alone,” or more literally “great sombre.” Gros Morne is a member of the Long Range Mountains, an outlying range of the Appalachian Mountains, stretching the length of the island’s west coast. It is the eroded remnants of a mountain range formed 1.2 billion years ago. “The park provides a rare example of the process of continental drift, where deep ocean crust and the rocks of the earth’s mantle lie exposed.”[1]
The Gros Morne National Park Reserve was established in 1973, and was made a national park on October 1, 2005.
The park was the subject of a short film in 2011’s National Parks Project, directed by Sturla Gunnarsson and scored by Melissa Auf der Maur, Sam Shalabi and Jamie Fleming.