Mont-Saint-Alban Observation Tower

Home to successive generations of the Dolbel and Roberts families from 1915 until 1970, this restored building is now a museum whose permanent exhibit, "Gaspesians from Land's End" (Ces Gaspésiens du bout du monde), covers the rich tapestry of communities who have made their home over the years at the east end of the Gaspé Peninsula: from the Mi'kmaq Indians who have lived here from time immemorial, to the intrepid Québécois and Acadian settlers of New France, to the British, Irish and Channel Islander fishing families who moved in after the conquest of Quebec in 1760, to newer arrivals such as Italians and Jews. As well, with the cooperation of a number of former residents, the museum also tells the unfortunate and still-controversial story of the families whose homes were expropriated by the Canadian government in 1970 to create the national park.

Built by William Hyman, a Russian Jewish merchant who settled in Grande-Grave in 1864, this duo of handsome buildings on the shore of Gaspé Bay were a centre of the town's community life in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Out of these premises Hyman operated a business that was eventually the main employer in Grande-Grave: an enterprise comprised of the town's main general store, selling imported household goods of all kinds, as well as a fishing business that was the chief rival in the region to the Paspébiac-based Charles Robin Company which controlled a great majority of the Gulf of St. Lawrence cod fishery at the time. Today, the interior of the store has been restored to its late-19th century appearance, with antique goods on the shelves ranging from clothing to porcelain table service to patent medicines to farm implements. As well, museum exhibits are contained in the former Hyman family living quarters on the second floor of the main building as well as the fish warehouse a few steps down the hill, which detail the various ways of life practised by Grande-Grave residents of the day, extracting their needs from the land and sea on a seasonal basis through fishing, logging, and small-scale farming. There's also a short film, "Time and Tide Remembered" (Mémoire de sel), screened in a small room just off the floor of the general store.

Built in 1901 and now listed on the Canadian Register of Historic Places, this brightly-colored cottage was once the home of the Blanchette family, a typical Gaspesian household of the day whose patriarch, Xavier, made his living catching, drying and selling the cod he caught in the waters of Gaspé Bay and the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The Blanchette House has been painstakingly restored inside and out with rooms furnished in authentic early-20th century style, and it's staffed daily in season by tour guides in period costume who'll lead you through the house, fish shed, and woodshed. Tours conclude in the barn, where the short interpretive video, "We Always Looked to the Sea" (On regardait toujours vers la mer), is screened continuously.

The name of this trail, which translates to "A Prelude to Forillon", is no misnomer: this 600-m (0.3-mile) boardwalk behind the North Area Interpretation Centre (Centre d'interprétation du secteur nord) provides a bird's-eye view over all of the park's diverse landscapes, forest-carpeted mountains and cliff-lined seashores alike. Multisensory interpretation modules are on hand to further elucidate what you're seeing and help you get a sense of what Forillon is all about. Prélude à Forillon is the easiest trail in the park, and the only one that is fully wheelchair-accessible.

Located in the park's mountainous interior between Cap-des-Rosiers and Cap-aux-Os, this one-km (0.6-mile) loop descends the steep valley of a babbling brook, passing by a lovely waterfall tucked away in a grove of maple and cedar trees. This easy trail is marked with a wooden boardwalk for much of the way, but features some steep steps.

Standing atop seaside bluffs that loom 95 m (310 feet) over the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Cap-Gaspé Lighthouse marks the final "land's end" of the Gaspé Peninsula. Built to ward incoming ships away from Flowerpot Rock, a reef located just off the south shore of the cape, the current Cap-Gaspé Lighthouse is the third to stand on the site: built in 1950 to replace a shorter wood-frame structure that collapsed four years earlier, which in turn was a replacement for the original 1873 lighthouse that was lost to fire. Today, the lighthouse is fully automated and run on solar power, and accessible on foot or by bike.