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River

Twenty Mile Creek

Class

Plunge

Size

Large

Visitability

Outstanding

Accessibility

Honour Admission - $3

Activity

Busy

Walk Time

5min

Trail

Wheelchair Accessible

Gorge Access

Moderate

Other Trails

Many (Bruce Trail)

County

Niagara

Exit the QEW at Victoria Avenue (Niagara Rd 24), and drive south past Vineland. While you are driving up the big hill (Niagara Escarpment), watch for the sign for Balls Falls Conservation Area. Turn left on Sixth Avenue, and follow to the park. Park in the lot on the right side of the road. You should expect to pay a small admission fee of a few dollars per person. Check the Conservation Authority's web page for details.

Settlement

Vineland

NTS Map

30 M/3

Easting

631482

Northing

4777089

UTM Zone

Balls Falls Conservation Area offers lots of opportunities for the photography buff. The falls is a beauty, although you should be aware that Twenty Mile Creek can dry up completely during mid-summer droughts, making for a real disappointment. At about 27 m in height, Balls Falls is one of the larger waterfalls in the Golden Horseshoe region (unless the river has dried up!), and after Niagara, is surely the most visited in the Niagara Peninsula. The park is fairly well developed, with a large parking lot, picnic tables and a small pioneer village of some half dozen buildings. Still, the natural beauty of the area hasn't been disturbed too much. After parking your car, walk across the road and along the short footpath to the viewing platform located beside the old mill buildings.

Leaving the viewing platform, you can walk over the road bridge and through the grassy field on the west (left bank) side of the gorge. There is a footpath leading into the forest that eventually follows the gravel road, and ultimately takes you down into the lower portions of the gorge. There are some nice cascade sections below the main falls, and you could spend a few hours exploring this portion of Twenty Mile Creek. The trails become quite rugged, but are beautifully shaded by large Hemlocks and Cedars. Bedrock is exposed for several hundred meters downstream from the main falls, and a few large rock slides can be explored.

Many of the various Silurian and Ordovician rock strata of the Niagara Peninsula are exposed in the gorge. The main Balls Falls plunges over the Irondequoit limestone, which is a resistant layer overlying several weaker shale and sandstone units (Reynales, Thorold, Grimsby, Power Glen formations). The upper falls is formed by the Lockport dolostone, which is the same unit that forms the crest of Niagara Falls. The site was originally settled in the eraly 19th century by John and George Ball. They established grist, saw and woolen mills here, and for some time, the site was a local center for the newly colonized area. The settlement declined in importance when it was bypassed by the railway, which presumably couldn't find an easy way up the escarpment. Many of the pioneer buildings on the site can be visited, although you should check for visiting hours and dates.

Balls Falls is featured in the book "Waterfalls of Ontario" available from Firefly Books.