The Conestogo River is a river in
Waterloo Region
The Regional Municipality of Waterloo (Waterloo Region or Region of Waterloo) is a metropolitan area of Southern Ontario, Canada. It contains the cities of Cambridge, Kitchener and Waterloo (KWC or Tri-Cities), and the townships of North Dumfr ...
and
Wellington County in
Southwestern Ontario, Canada.
The river was named by Mennonite settlers after the
Conestoga River in Pennsylvania. In the 1800s there were several different spellings of the name of the river and of the nearby settlement of
Conestogo, Ontario
Conestogo is a community in the Canadian province of Ontario, located in the township of Woolwich in Waterloo Region. The population in 2016 was 1,270.
The community is located at the junction of the Grand and Conestogo Rivers. Conestogo is a te ...
but the name ending in "o" became official.
It is in the
Lake Erie Basin
Lake Erie Basin consists of Lake Erie and surrounding drainage basin, watersheds, which are typically named after the river, creek, or stream that provides drainage into the lake. The watersheds are located in the states of Indiana, Michigan, New ...
and joins the
Grand River as a right tributary at the community of
Conestogo.
A dam built on the river for flood control formed
Conestogo Lake, which covers an area of about . A conservation area operated by the
Grand River Conservation Authority is located on this lake.
Natural history
Fish species in the river include
brown trout,
pike
Pike, Pikes or The Pike may refer to:
Fish
* Blue pike or blue walleye, an extinct color morph of the yellow walleye ''Sander vitreus''
* Ctenoluciidae, the "pike characins", some species of which are commonly known as pikes
* ''Esox'', genus of ...
,
smallmouth bass,
perch
Perch is a common name for fish of the genus ''Perca'', freshwater gamefish belonging to the family Percidae. The perch, of which three species occur in different geographical areas, lend their name to a large order of vertebrates: the Per ...
,
walleye
The walleye (''Sander vitreus'', synonym ''Stizostedion vitreum''), also called the yellow pike or yellow pickerel, is a freshwater perciform fish native to most of Canada and to the Northern United States. It is a North American close relat ...
and
carp.
See also
*
List of rivers of Ontario
References
Sources
*
*
*
Rivers of the Regional Municipality of Waterloo
Rivers of Wellington County, Ontario
Tributaries of the Grand River (Ontario)
Wellesley, Ontario
{{Ontario-river-stub