Ravine Trail

If you look carefully you can see the landforms that took millions of years to form. 500 million years ago this area looked very different (see Ancient earth globe). A shallow sea deposited layers of silt and over millions of years the silt hardened into the red shale which now underlies the entire park. More recently (14000 years ago) when the last glaciers receded from this area their melt water further altered the shape of the landscape. Long gouges were deepened as the ice pushed out of the Lake Ontario basin. These can be seen today as low depressions running from south-east to north-west through the park.

Little Known Fact:The magnificent ravine has formed since the glacial ice left and the water carved its winding course into the land. It has taken about 14000 years for this ravine to form and the process continues today. The water continues to carve out the banks and carry silt and mud downstream into Lake Ontario.

The Bronte Creek valley corridor is designated as a provincially significant life science resource. It is the least disturbed and most continuous river valley system on the southward sloping shale plains north of Lake Ontario.