Heber Down Conservation Area is located in

Whitby, Ontario Whitby is a town in Durham Region. Whitby is located in Southern Ontario east of Ajax and west of Oshawa, on the north shore of Lake Ontario and is home to the headquarters of Durham Region. It had a population of 138,501 at the 2021 census. It ...

and is owned and operated by

Central Lake Ontario Conservation Authority Central Lake Ontario Conservation Authority (CLOCA), is a conservation authority established under the Conservation Authorities Act of Ontario in 1958. It forms a partnership with the Province of Ontario, the Ministry of Natural Resources, the ...

. It is located within the Lynde Creek

drainage basin A drainage basin is an area of land where all flowing surface water converges to a single point, such as a river mouth, or flows into another body of water, such as a lake or ocean. A basin is separated from adjacent basins by a perimeter, t ...

; it is a part of the provincially significant Heber Down Wetland Complex. The area is composed of two types of broad terrain units: a valley formed by the creek and the

Glacial Lake Iroquois Glacial Lake Iroquois was a prehistoric proglacial lake that existed at the end of the last ice age approximately 13,000 years ago. The lake was essentially an enlargement of the present Lake Ontario that formed because the St. Lawrence River down ...

beach. The area provides such recreational activities as hiking, mountain biking, picnicking, and fishing.

Landform and vegetation

The sandy and gravelly Glacial Lake Iroquois beach is a remnant of the

Wisconsin glaciation The Wisconsin Glacial Episode, also called the Wisconsin glaciation, was the most recent glacial period of the North American ice sheet complex. This advance included the Cordilleran Ice Sheet, which nucleated in the northern North American Cor ...

. It was deposited by Lake Iroquois, the precursor to

Lake Ontario Lake Ontario is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. It is bounded on the north, west, and southwest by the Canadian province of Ontario, and on the south and east by the U.S. state of New York. The Canada–United States border sp ...

, about 12,500 year ago. As the lake was shrinking, a line of beach deposits was receding as well, resulting in deposition of sand over the layers of silt and clay that were deposited when the lake was deeper. Following the final recession of the lake, the exposed sand layers were soaked by rainfall. Due to impervious layers underneath, high

water table The water table is the upper surface of the zone of saturation. The zone of saturation is where the pores and fractures of the ground are saturated with water. It can also be simply explained as the depth below which the ground is saturated. T ...

resulted in formation of large areas of

swamps A swamp is a forested wetland.Keddy, P.A. 2010. Wetland Ecology: Principles and Conservation (2nd edition). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. 497 p. Swamps are considered to be transition zones because both land and water play a role in ...

and

marshes A marsh is a wetland that is dominated by herbaceous rather than woody plant species.Keddy, P.A. 2010. Wetland Ecology: Principles and Conservation (2nd edition). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. 497 p Marshes can often be found at ...

. Eastern parts of the conservation area are occupied by treed swamps and

thicket A thicket is a very dense stand of trees or tall shrubs, often dominated by only one or a few species, to the exclusion of all others. They may be formed by species that shed large numbers of highly viable seeds that are able to germinate in the ...

swamps under the

power transmission lines Electric power transmission is the bulk movement of electrical energy from a generating site, such as a power plant, to an electrical substation. The interconnected lines that facilitate this movement form a ''transmission network''. This is ...

, where trees were removed. The western portions of the area are characterized by the steeply incised valley of the Lynde Creek. At places where it cuts across the sandy Lake Iroquois beach,

groundwater Groundwater is the water present beneath Earth's surface in rock and soil pore spaces and in the fractures of rock formations. About 30 percent of all readily available freshwater in the world is groundwater. A unit of rock or an unconsolidate ...

seeps occur, providing an

ecological niche In ecology, a niche is the match of a species to a specific environmental condition. Three variants of ecological niche are described by It describes how an organism or population responds to the distribution of resources and competitors (for ...

for plants growing on the valley's walls.

Cultural history

In the late 19th and early 20th century, a deep

gully A gully is a landform created by running water, mass movement, or commonly a combination of both eroding sharply into soil or other relatively erodible material, typically on a hillside or in river floodplains or terraces. Gullies resemble lar ...

, incising the area, was used by

horse thieves The horse (''Equus ferus caballus'') is a domesticated, one-toed, hoofed mammal. It belongs to the taxonomic family Equidae and is one of two extant subspecies of ''Equus ferus''. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million y ...

as a

layover 250px, Layover for buses at LACMTA's Warner Center Transit Hub, Los Angeles ">Los_Angeles.html" ;"title="Warner Center Transit Hub, Los Angeles">Warner Center Transit Hub, Los Angeles In scheduled transportation, a layover (also waypoint, way ...

. Local inhabitants interpreted the noises produced by the thieves and horses in a superstitious way: they assumed that the

Devil A devil is the personification of evil as it is conceived in various cultures and religious traditions. It is seen as the objectification of a hostile and destructive force. Jeffrey Burton Russell states that the different conceptions of t ...

was holding court there. Hence, the gully was named Devil's Den. During the 1910s, the

Canadian Northern Railway The Canadian Northern Railway (CNoR) was a historic Canadian transcontinental railway. At its 1923 merger into the Canadian National Railway , the CNoR owned a main line between Quebec City and Vancouver via Ottawa, Winnipeg, and Edmonton. Mani ...

constructed a new line to provide passenger service from

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...

to Trenton. A bridge over the Devil's Den was completed in March 1910. While the bridge itself has been demolished, remains of cement

abutment An abutment is the substructure at the ends of a bridge span or dam supporting its superstructure. Single-span bridges have abutments at each end which provide vertical and lateral support for the span, as well as acting as retaining walls ...

s and

piers Piers may refer to: * Pier, a raised structure over a body of water * Pier (architecture), an architectural support * Piers (name), a given name and surname (including lists of people with the name) * Piers baronets, two titles, in the baronetages ...

that served as a foundation of the bridge can still be found in the area.

References

External links

Heber Down Conservation Area
{{Ontario parks Conservation areas in Ontario Protected areas of the Regional Municipality of Durham

Landform and vegetation

Cultural history

See also

References

External links