Ball's Falls is very close - just two towns away, and is a good place for fall colour. Nothing in Niagara is on the provincial park colour map. But then Vineland is just a short drive to find out how the colours are doing.
It has a large array of native species including wild sarsaparilla, sycamore, sassafras and pignut hickory. I think it has an old growth forest section as well.
I hadn't realized it is a historical ghost town.
"Balls Falls began in 1809 when the Ball brothers built a wooden gristmill on Twenty Mile Creek in the heart of the Niagara Peninsula. Known as Glen Elgin, it had by the 1840s grown into one of the area’s busiest industrial towns. The flourishing village boasted a barrel maker, a blacksmith and two lime kilns, as well as a store and several houses.
But during the 1850s, the Great Western Railway laid its rails well below the escarpment some distance north of Glen Elgin. New industries located by the railway, and Glen Elgin gradually became a ghost town.
Thanks to the efforts of the Niagara Region Conservation Authority, the site is preserved. Of the old buildings, only the gristmill, a lime kiln and the Ball homestead have survived. Other historic buildings from the surrounding region, including a pioneer log cabin and a picturesque wooden church, have been relocated to Balls Falls park.
Interpretive plaques throughout the site recount the stories of the village and its various operations. The entrance to the conservation area lies a short distance south of the village of Vineland on Regional Road 24."
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