Tucker Park

You’ll find Tucker Park in Millidgeville on Kennebecasis Drive. The sign for the entrance is nestled into the trees, so watch closely for it! Once you reach the parking lot, you can stroll down the paved trail to the beach, a picnic area, and an accessible viewing platform. Hiking trails begin beyond this. You’ll find our Stonehammer panel in front of the beach!

The red rocks at Tucker Park are about 375 million years old, forming during the Devonian Period. They are often described as ‘Rivers of Rock’ since they are lithified layers of sediment that accumulated in riverbeds. The sand, mud and boulders you see suspended in stone were once sweeping down fast flowing rivers, eroding from the nearby Appalachian Mountains to the north and south of the Geopark,. These mountains are now rolling foothills of Atlantic Canada but they were once part of the majestic Appalachian Mountain Chain of eastern North America that would have looked similar to the Rocky Mountains of today. The Devonian Period of geologic time is often called ‘The Age of Fishes’. During this Period many of the groups of fish we now know flourished. Bony fish and sharks evolved rapidly during this time and are predominant today. A well-preserved fossil of a lobefin fish was recently discovered near Tucker Park and gives us a clue to the age of these rocks. The Devonian period was a time of important evolutionary change. Amphibians evolved from fish and began the transition from water to land. Although we have not found bones or footprints from these earliest amphibians in New Brunswick yet, they are known from similar-aged rocks elsewhere in Europe and Greenland.

You can also see evidence of our last Ice Age here in the form of scratches called striations on some of the smoothed outcrops. During the last glacial maximum, 20,000 years ago, the river valley would have hosted a massive glacier. As glaciers grow they slowly advance, picking up rocks and sediment along their path. These materials create striations on surface bedrock as they are scraped across them. Taking an orientation off of these scratches can actually tell you what direction the glacier was flowing in! Many boulders from the older Devonian rocks have been “plucked” from the bedrock in northern Saint John near Tucker Park and were transported a short distance where they can be seen eroding from glacial till deposits along the Bay of Fundy Shorelines at Fern ledges and Bayshore Beach to the south.

The current Tucker Park is actually only a small section of the 400 acre farm bequeathed by Colonel Tucker to the city of Saint John in 1914. The rest of the land has been split up over the years with 87 acres of the original farm being turned over to the University of New Brunswick for its Saint John Tucker Park Campus in 1965. The remaining land was at risk of further development until the formation of the Tucker Park Recreation Association, who have worked tirelessly to demonstrate the value and potential of the Park with new infrastructure and programming.

The three small islands that make up The Brothers are Goat Island, Indian Island, and Burnt Island. These islands are found at the confluence of two great rivers, the Kennebecasis and the Wolastoq. Little is known about the history of The Brothers other than the fact that they were granted to the Wolastoqiyik in 1830 for use by the Paul brothers. Unfortunately the title of Burnt Island is under dispute. In the 1920s, a copper mine was staked on the island. Because of this mineral claim, when the province transferred the administration of reserve lands to the federal government in 1959, Burnt Island was not included in the transfer. Today, Indian, and Goat islands are registered to Kingsclear, Madawaska, Tobique, and Woodstock, with plans to have St. Mary’s and Oromocto added to the shared ownership.

Rockwood Park, Royal Kennebecasis Yacht Club Lookout, Summerville Ferry, Sea Dog Cove Nature Reserve, Boar’s Head Nature Preserve, Bayswater lighthouse, Milkish Inlet Bridge.