The city of

Hamilton Hamilton may refer to: * Alexander Hamilton (1755/1757–1804), first U.S. Secretary of the Treasury and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States * ''Hamilton'' (musical), a 2015 Broadway musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda ** ''Hamilton'' (al ...

Ontario Ontario is the southernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Located in Central Canada, Ontario is the Population of Canada by province and territory, country's most populous province. As of the 2021 Canadian census, it ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

is home to more than 100

waterfall A waterfall is any point in a river or stream where water flows over a vertical drop or a series of steep drops. Waterfalls also occur where meltwater drops over the edge of a tabular iceberg or ice shelf. Waterfalls can be formed in seve ...

s and cascades, most of which are on or near the

Bruce Trail The Bruce Trail is a hiking trail in southern Ontario, Canada, from the Niagara River to the tip of Tobermory, Ontario. The main trail is more than long and there are over of associated side trails. The trail mostly follows the edge of the Nia ...

as it winds through the

Niagara Escarpment The Niagara Escarpment is an approximately discontinuous, arc-shaped but generally northward-facing escarpment, or cuesta, in Canada and the United States. The escarpment begins south of Lake Ontario and circumscribes the top of the Great Lake ...

. Ontario's internationally recognized Niagara Escarpment provides perfect geological conditions for waterfalls to occur, from Tobermory to

Niagara Falls Niagara Falls is a group of three waterfalls at the southern end of Niagara Gorge, spanning the Canada–United States border, border between the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Ontario in Canada and the state of New York (s ...

. With its crest,

Webster's Falls Webster's Falls is a classical curtain and plunge waterfall located in the Spencer Gorge Conservation Area in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The water flows down Spencer Creek. In the past, the falls have been known by various names such as Dr. ...

is the largest waterfall within the city. Tew's Falls is a ribbon waterfall, and is the tallest waterfall found in Hamilton. Both Webster's and Tew's Falls are located at the

Spencer Gorge / Webster's Falls Conservation Area Spencer Gorge Conservation Area is a conservation area located on the Niagara Escarpment in the community of Dundas in Hamilton, Ontario. It is owned and operated by the Hamilton Conservation Authority. It has views over Hamilton and a two ma ...

Albion Falls Albion Falls is a classical/cascade waterfall flowing down the Niagara Escarpment in Red Hill Valley, in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. With cascade falls the downpour is staggered into a series of steps causing water to "cascade". The top of the fa ...

was once seriously considered as a possible source of water for Hamilton. Rocks from the Albion Falls area were used in the construction of the Royal Botanical Gardens' Rock Garden. There used to be more waterfalls in Hamilton than exist today. Many of the waterfalls in central Hamilton slowly vanished as population and construction on

Hamilton Mountain Hamilton, Ontario, Hamilton is located on the western end of the Niagara Peninsula and wraps around the westernmost part of the Lake Ontario. Most of the city including the downtown section lies along the south shore. Situated in the geographic c ...

increased. As well, in the early years, James Street extended south, but was interrupted by a

bog A bog or bogland is a wetland that accumulates peat as a deposit of dead plant materials often mosses, typically sphagnum moss. It is one of the four main types of wetlands. Other names for bogs include mire, mosses, quagmire, and musk ...

at Hunter Street which eventually (1844) was drained out and graded. Many of Hamilton's main buildings and factories in the north end are built on reclaimed or infilled land, which harmed the drainage of Hamilton and the water

ecology Ecology () is the natural science of the relationships among living organisms and their Natural environment, environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community (ecology), community, ecosystem, and biosphere lev ...

Hamilton Harbour Hamilton Harbour (formerly known as Burlington Bay) lies on the western tip of Lake Ontario, bounded on the northwest by the City of Burlington, on the south by the City of Hamilton, and on the east by Hamilton Beach (south of the Burlington ...

. Many of the falls in west Hamilton are accessible from the Chedoke Radial Trail. It is built on what was once the route for the

Brantford Brantford ( 2021 population: 104,688) is a city in Ontario, Canada, founded on the Grand River in Southwestern Ontario. It is surrounded by Brant County but is politically separate with a municipal government of its own that is fully indep ...

and Hamilton Electric Railway owned by the Cataract Power Light and Traction Company (later Dominion Power and Transmission). The "Five Johns", (John Cameron, John Dickenson (Canadian politician),

John Morison Gibson Sir John Morison Gibson (January 1, 1842 – June 3, 1929) was a Canadian politician and the tenth Lieutenant Governor of Ontario. Biography John Morison Gibson, the son of Scottish immigrants, was born in 1842, in Toronto. He grew up ...

, John Moodie, Sr. and John Sutherland), formed The Cataract Power Co. Ltd. introducing electric power to Hamilton in 1898. On August 25, 1898, power was sent twenty seven miles from DeCew Falls,

St. Catharines St. Catharines is the most populous city in Canada's Niagara Region, the eighth largest urban area in the province of Ontario. As of 2021, St. Catharines has an area of and 136,803 residents. It lies in Southern Ontario, south of Toronto ac ...

, using water from the old

Welland Canal The Welland Canal is a ship canal in Ontario, Canada, and part of the St. Lawrence Seaway and Great Lakes Waterway. The canal traverses the Niagara Peninsula between Port Weller, Ontario, Port Weller on Lake Ontario, and Port Colborne on Lak ...

. New industries, such as the forerunners of the Steel Co. of Canada (

Stelco Stelco Holdings Inc. (known as U.S. Steel Canada from 2007 to 2016) is a Canadian steel company based in Hamilton, Ontario. Stelco was founded in 1910 by the amalgamation of several smaller firms. It continued on for almost 100 years until it ...

) and Canadian Westinghouse, were attracted here by the cheaper, more efficient power. One time this Company controlled hydro power from

, including the

Hamilton Street Railway The Hamilton Street Railway (HSR) is the public transport agency for Hamilton, Ontario. The name is a legacy of the company's early period, when public transit in Hamilton was primarily served by streetcars. Although streetcars are no longer us ...

and the area's radial lines. Back then the city's nickname was "The Electric City." There are four waterfall types and they are designated as follows: * Ribbon –

height Height is measure of vertical distance, either vertical extent (how "tall" something or someone is) or vertical position (how "high" a point is). For an example of vertical extent, "This basketball player is 7 foot 1 inches in height." For an e ...

is notably greater than its crest

width Length is a measure of distance. In the International System of Quantities, length is a quantity with dimension distance. In most systems of measurement a base unit for length is chosen, from which all other units are derived. In the Intern ...

; stream forms a thin ribbon of

water Water is an inorganic compound with the chemical formula . It is a transparent, tasteless, odorless, and Color of water, nearly colorless chemical substance. It is the main constituent of Earth's hydrosphere and the fluids of all known liv ...

. * Classical – height and crest width are nearly equal. * Curtain – height is notably smaller than its crest width. * Cascade – vertical drop is broken into a series of steps causing water to cascade down incline. Some of the criteria used to define a separate Hamilton waterfall include: The waterfall has to have a vertical drop of at least 3 metres or either as a vertical drop or a cascade, the crest width has to be at least 1 metre or wide, the waterfall must have some natural component and not be entirely man-made; If a waterfall is beside another waterfall but coming from two separate creeks or

streams A stream is a continuous body of surface water flowing within the bed and banks of a channel. Depending on its location or certain characteristics, a stream may be referred to by a variety of local or regional names. Long, large stream ...

, then they could be considered as two separate waterfalls and the waterfall has to be located within the boundaries of the new City of Hamilton. On January 1, 2001 the new city of Hamilton was formed from the amalgamation of the Regional Municipality of Hamilton-Wentworth and its six municipalities: Hamilton, Ancaster, Dundas,

Flamborough Flamborough is a village and civil parish in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It is situated approximately north-east of Bridlington town centre on the prominent coastal feature of Flamborough Head. The most prominent man-made feature o ...

, Glanbrook, and Stoney Creek. Before amalgamation, Hamilton had a population of 331,121 divided into 100 neighbourhoods. The new amalgamated city had 490,268 people in over 200 neighbourhoods.

Waterfalls list

The Hamilton Conservation Authority maintains a web database of the city's waterfalls. The list below comes from that website, which contains 100 waterfalls.

Water quality problems

Many of Hamilton's creeks and waterfalls, especially those in the heavily-urbanized Chedoke and Red Hill creek watersheds, suffer from chronic water quality problems. Much of these systems have been buried in large underground concrete storm sewers that run under neighbourhoods established decades ago atop the Niagara escarpment. Industrial and residential use through the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries have caused, and continue to cause, substantial environmental damage to these watersheds. While the city of Hamilton has invested in wastewater storage tanks and tunnels in recent years, as of 2020, water testing performed by non-governmental monitoring bodies continues to reveal high ''e. coli'' counts. While the City of Hamilton's website does state that some waterfalls may be polluted and discourages entering the water around waterfalls, it does not state which ones are polluted, nor does the city test the water at any waterfall locations, since it does not designate them as official swimming areas.

Chedoke Falls and watershed

In March 2020, it was revealed that as much as 24 billion litres of untreated wastewater had been leaking into Chedoke creek since at least 2014 due to insufficiencies in Hamilton's sewerage and stormwater management system. Chedoke falls is often listed as one of Hamilton's 10 most popular waterfalls, and visitors can regularly be seen swimming and wading in its waters. The Chedoke creek watershed has seen regular discharges of raw sewage for the past century; today, untreated wastewater is discharged into the river regularly during rainstorms, when the city's Combined Sewer Overflows (CSO's) and a 77 million litre concrete wastewater storage tank are incapable of handling increased water volumes. The storm sewer feeding Chedoke falls has also been plagued by incorrectly-installed sanitary sewer cross-connections from the residential neighbourhoods it runs beneath. The amount of raw sewage flowing into the creek on an ongoing basis is unknown. These problems are compounded by the fact that the Chedoke creek is buried in a series of concrete stormwater-and-overflow sewers for almost all of its length; indeed, Chedoke falls itself flows directly out of a storm sewer outfall, visible from the base of the falls. Other waterfalls in the Chedoke creek watershed include Westcliffe Falls and Princess Falls.

Albion Falls and watershed

Albion Falls is one of Hamilton's largest waterfalls, and sees a significant volume of visitors during the summertime. All of the water flowing over the falls originates in storm sewers that drain substantial portions of Hamilton's west mountain neighbourhoods. In particular, the Stone Church Rd. Storm Trunk Sewer that drains neighbourhoods on either side of Stone Church Road East, nicknamed the "mountain juggernaut", is the largest known sewer in Canada. Water from upstream of the falls emerges from various sewer outfalls, traverses the Dartnall Rd. off-ramps from the Lincoln M. Alexander Parkway, and proceeds to a pond adjacent to the falls before flowing over the falls themselves. Studies in the early 2000s and 2012 indicated high concentrations of ''e. coli'' bacteria in various locations along the Red Hill creek watershed, which Albion falls is a part of. A 2013 study of a Red Hill sub-watershed, the Upper Ottawa Creek, noted high concentrations of chloride, sodium, various heavy metals, phosphorus, and likely contamination from sanitary sewer cross-connections. It remains unknown whether the city has addressed these issues.

Images

File:DevilsPunchBowl.jpg, Devil's Punch Bowl File:ChedokeFalls.jpg, Chedoke Falls File:KingsForestParkL.JPG, Albion Falls, King's Forest Park

References

External links

Great Lakes waterfalls and beyond (www.gowaterfalling.com)

Cascades and Waterfalls of Hamilton (www.waterfalls.hamilton.ca)

Hamilton- "The Waterfall Capital of the World" (www.cityofwaterfalls.ca)

Hamilton Conservation Authority- Waterfalls (www.conservationhamilton.ca)

Hamilton Waterfalls- Photo Gallery (www.hamilton.worldweb.com)

Bruce Trail (www.brucetrail.org)

* ttp://www.hamiltonpostcards.com/pages/waterfalls.html Vintage Postcards: Waterfalls in and around Hamilton, Ontario

Maps

Hamilton Waterfall Map PDF. (http://map.hamilton.ca)

Video clips

Hamilton- The City of Waterfalls (www.myhamilton.ca)

{{North America topic, List of waterfalls of

Waterfalls A waterfall is any point in a river or stream where water flows over a vertical drop or a series of steep drops. Waterfalls also occur where meltwater drops over the edge of a tabular iceberg or ice shelf. Waterfalls can be formed in several ...

Hamilton, Ontario Hamilton is a port city in the Canadian Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Ontario. Hamilton has a 2021 Canadian census, population of 569,353 (2021), and its Census Metropolitan Area, census metropolitan area, which encompasses ...