In 1839, Joseph Jukes, an English geologist and surveyor for Newfoundland, made a visit to Northern Gut while exploring local slate deposits. For June 21, 1839, Jukes wrote the following in his diary:Here a brook empties itself into the sea having run for about three miles through a narrow pond or “cosh” as my men called it. We hauled the boat up the shallow bed of the brook for a few yards into deeper water and then rowed up the lake. I then struck off with two men and the theodolite and barometer to the top of a hill on the north side called “Sunday's hill” whose height I found to be about 500 feet.Improved roads and an influx of settlers meant that by 1840 there was enough settlement in the Valley to justify the establishment of a Roman Catholic school.
