It is located in the Shoal Harbour valley, fronting an arm of the Atlantic Ocean called Random Sound.

The Clarenville area has many of the physical features characteristic of the East Coast of Newfoundland and has a marine climate.

It lies along the coastal slopes which rise from the Atlantic Ocean towards the interior central plateau of the island.

The dominating physical feature is a ridge of broken peaks which rise to heights up to 152 meters above sea level parallel to the coast line.

Bare Mountain, with an elevation of 156 meters above sea level, dominates the skyline in the northern part of the town.

This ridge falls sharply towards the sea so that its coastal edge is characterized by moderate to severe slopes.

The most notable of these is the valley formed by the Lower Shoal Harbour River and Dark Hole Brook and their seaward extension of Lower Shoal Harbour, a shallow and narrow indentation of the sea marked by small rock islands and tidal mud flats.

As probably the deepest, best sheltered, ice-free port on Newfoundland's east coast, Clarenville is suited for commercial shipping and recreational boating.

It has been attributed to a memorial to the Duke of Clarence, eldest son of the then Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) who died in 1892.

Church records show that Tilley's name appears several times in the late 1830s and 1840s, when there was apparently no minister or missionary available.

He sent a sample to the exhibition and received a prize in the form of a bronze medal with the inscription: "Warranted to keep free from taint and to retain its purity and nutritious quality, in any climate for many years."

Clarenville held the 1994 Newfoundland Winter Games and the 1997 National Under 17 Men's Softball Tournament.