The Saint-Pierre and Miquelon archipelago, France’s only territory in North America after 1763, was a colony dedicated to exploiting cod fishing rights on the banks of Newfoundland. Initiated in the early sixteenth century, if not earlier and peaking in the nineteenth century, this fishery ended with the 1992 Canadian moratorium. This paper discusses the coastal development of this archipelago between the seventeenth and twentieth century. Building on previous studies (CNRS/EHESS), Drassm has been conducting research since 2017 so as to compile archival and archaeological evidence that sheds light on coastal development strategies. After reviewing types of fishing, navigation conditions and natural shelters, we focus on installations constructed to facilitate fishing. Lacking permanent inhabitants prior to the seventeenth century, the earliest improvements such as stages, fishing stores, and cobble beaches for drying cod or graves were the work of private individuals. Although few vestiges remain, historic maps and aerial photographs serve to locate stages built between the seventeenth and twentieth century. Public works improving the ports were curtailed in the eighteenth century by Franco-English rivalries, and later, by environmental, technical, and budgetary constraints. The archipelago was handed back to France in 1816, and subsequent projects focussed on the Saint-Pierre Barachois. Dredging and construction of quays, wharves, and dykes took place from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century. With the Entente Cordiale (1904), France sought to attract ships to Saint-Pierre, but these projects ended in the 1930s.