The town of Cap-Rouge, located west of Québec City, takes its name from the reddish-coloured cliffs along the St. Lawrence River. A few families settled there around 1650, but the area remained sparsely populated for a very long time. Around 1825, when James Pattison Cockburn illustrated it, Cap-Rouge was experiencing an industrial and commercial boom (pottery, forging, brickworks, timber trade), but most of the town was still rural.