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Rose Blanche harbour is on the east side of a small bay and provides good anchorage for fishing vessels close by a narrow peninsula. 
It is well sheltered by Caines Island and by Rose Blanche Point. Historically, the population and the mercantile activity of Rose Blanche have been concentrated around the main harbour, but there have also been smaller fishing premises at Crow Cove (to the northwest) and at the shallow basin known as Big Bottom, to the southeast. Caines Island and Rose Blanche Point (the Neck) were also inhabited until the 1960s, while in the past a few people also lived on Hopkins Island and Duck Island, further out Rose Blanche Bay.
The first permanent settlers of Rose Blanche probably arrived about 1810. Local traditions have it that among the earliest settlers were families named Caines, Currie and Payne, supplied by Jersey merchants at Harbour Breton. In the 1836 Census a population of 47 was recorded at Rose Blanche, and this increased to 108 by 1845. When Rev. William Marshall visited in 1840 he recorded meeting Caines, as well as a man named Brown (then living in Bay LeMoine). Marshall performed a marriage during his visit Ñ between the daughter of Francis Payne and one Richard Sweet, who also settled at Rose Blanche. (Marshall observed what he considered to be undue levity at the wedding, noting that "such a fondness for dancing etc. prevails on this shore as I never saw manifested before".) Other family names of Rose Blanche by the 1850s include Buffett, Rose and Shears. Jonas Shears was probably at Rose Blanche in the 1820s, but the family would appear to have moved to Harbour le Cou in the 1840s, where they were joined by George Thomas, who came out from Sherbourne, England.
The southwest coast was one of the last "frontier" areas in Newfoundland, and in the mid-1800s continued to attract new settlers from England and the Channel Islands. Families coming to the Rose Blanche area directly from England in the 1850s included the Cox family (from Exeter) at Diamond Cove and the Hatchers (from Huston).
Lovell's Newfoundland Directory for 1871 described Rose Blanche as a "flourishing settlement, with a large mercantile establishment", with two merchants (Benjamin Smith and Philip Sorsoliel), a Church of England clergyman and a doctor. In large, part the prosperity of the town lay in its being the centre of an emerging winter fishery on the southwest coast. In addition to local traders and suppliers, vessels from Nova Scotia and Massachusetts were also trading and fishing in the area. While many people fished local waters in the summers, Rose Blanche fishermen also participated in the Labrador and bank fisheries. One of Newfoundland's earliest lighthouses was erected at Rose Blanche Point in the 1870s. and has been recently restored. A second lighthouse was built on Caines Island in 1904.
After Confederation the Rose Blanche Bank remained one of the most prolific fishing areas on the southwest coast, although many people felt it was being irrevocably harmed by foreign over-fishing from the 1950s. In the late 1950s the South Coast Commission recommended that a fresh-frozen fish plant be established at Rose Blanche and that further concentration of the population in the area be encouraged by resettlement to that community. A plant was opened by the Port aux Basques firm of T.J. Hardy in 1960. The next year a road connection was provided with Channel-Port aux Basques and people began to resettle from outlying communities, while the last few families were moved in from Caines Island and the Neck. By 1971 the newly-incorporated municipality had a population 
of nearly 1000 once again. However, the 1980s were difficult times for the Rose Blanche fish plant, which was purchased from Hardy's by Fishery Products International in 1984, during the fisheries restructuring initiative, then was closed the next year. In the later 1980s the plant was operated sporadically (and amid some controversy) by Rose Ting. It finally closed, with slim prospects of reopening.
Story from The Encyclopedia of Newfoundland and Labrador. Thanks to Jeff Currie for providing photos.
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