Lepreau Falls Provincial Park

Lepreau Falls Provincial Park can be found following a short detour off of Route 1 to the West of Saint John. Follow the signs to stay on the 175 to Lepreau Falls Road and you will soon find yourselves at the falls, where there is ample parking and excellent views!

The rocks at Lepreau Falls are likely of Early Carboniferous age, about 325 to 315 million years old. The rocks are red to purple sandstone, shale and conglomerate. Very few fossils are found in these rocks and their age has been difficult to determine. In the 1970’s geologists thought the rocks were from the Triassic Period (251 to 199 million years ago). The fossils found here were described as Triassic age. They are now known to be much older.

Fossils are usually the buried remains of animals and plants, preserved as petrified body remains, a cast or a mould. Fossils can also be traces made by organisms, such as footprint trackways left by animals walking across the mud. Trace fossils provide scientific information about behaviour. How fast did the animal walk? Did it travel alone or in a herd?

A rare occurrence of a tetrapod trackway was discovered at Lepreau Falls in 1974. A tetrapod is a four-legged animal. The footprints were likely made by an amphibian. At least two sets of footprints were found, with a groove down the middle made by the tail, as the animal walked across a wet surface. Geological information at the time indicated the rocks here were from the Triassic Period (251 to 199 million years ago). They are now believed to be Early Carboniferous age rocks (325 to 315 million years ago). The footprints were probably left by some of the oldest amphibians on Earth.

Rocks are eroded by the action of water slowly breaking down the layers into smaller and smaller pieces. During the winter, ice and frost will also break down the rock. As the rocks are slowly worn down the sand and mud will be washed out into the Bay of Fundy. They will eventually become sedimentary rocks again as part of the recycling of the Earth’s crust. The red sedimentary rocks at Lepreau Falls were once deposited in water along a river or shoreline. The footprint trackways found here tell us the water was often shallow.

The name Lepreau is of French origin and is likely a derivative of, la pereau, for “little rabbit.” The contemporary spelling has prevailed since the mid-nineteenth century. William Francis Ganong explored the area extensively.

Ganong was a member of numerous scientific and scholarly societies including the Natural History society of New Brunswick. He had published a considerable number of articles and works including a translation of Champlain’s “Voyages to Acadia and New England” as well as writing on cartography, botany, physiography and nomenclature.

By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries most of the interior topography of New Brunswick had not yet been completely surveyed. Driven by a great affection for his home province, Dr. William Francis Ganong (1864-1941) explored and documented many of these aspects of New Brunswick. Part of his invaluable recording is the photographs that he took as memory aids from the long, and often arduous, canoe trips that he undertook. At this period, amateur photography was in its infancy and Ganong took advantage of the portable camera and roll film that were just being made available to the general public. What could not be controlled however, were the upset canoes, dampness and erratic lighting conditions that inevitably give the images a sometimes less than ideal presentation. More importantly though, these small glimpses of captured light provide the earliest and most complete visual documentation of a region just prior to its transformation by modern industry.

Ganong had a great love for New Brunswick and a keen interest in both its history and natural history. By the age of seventeen, he started serious, first-hand explorations of the rivers and coastal areas as well as the flora and fauna of the province, frequently charting his own maps. Those explorations continued throughout his life.

Maces Bay Lookout, Point Lepreau Lighthouse, Mill Pond Covered Bridge, Moose Creek, Belding’s Reef Nature Preserve, Musquash Estuary Falls.