Migratory – Sixteen Mile Creek – Oakville, Ontario

Sixteen Mile Creek.

Commanding a majestic creek valley cut straight through the middle of Oakville, Sixteen Mile Creek is a whole world unto itself – a stunning natural escape amid a rapidly expanding urban area. Whether you are driving over the bridges that cross it, hiking its forested trails, boating down it near the Oakville waterfront, or enjoying a picnic beside its mouth at Tannery Park or Lakeside Park, you are sure to be impressed by Sixteen Mile Creek’s charismatic presence on the Oakville landscape.

The “watershed” – or total land area from which rain water drains – for Sixteen Mile Creek extends more than 20 miles northwest from Lake Ontario (approximated above), dwarfing Fourteen Mile Creek. Sixteen Mile Creek, Fourteen Mile Creek and Bronte (formerly Twelve Mile) Creek were not named for their size – rather, all three of these creeks were originally named for how far the creek mouths were along the lakeshore from the west corner of Lake Ontario.

At 372 square kilometres in size (~144 square miles, or 91,923 acres), the massive watershed lands covered by the headwaters, tributaries, forests, ravines, farmlands and city lands feeding into Sixteen Mile Creek make it the largest of all Conservation Halton’s watersheds, as well as the largest and most central watershed area in all of Halton Regional Municipality.

Its land base extends east and north alongside the edge of Mississauga, north towards the southern edges of Georgetown, Limehouse and Acton, and as far west as Campbellville. Its waters flow together from these rural lands at the very core of the Halton Region, before carving through the centre of Oakville through a massive ravine valley and rushing to join the waters of Lake Ontario in a grand finale at the Oakville waterfront. Sixteen Mile Creek is steeped in the Halton countryside – in many ways, it is like the heart of Halton itself.

The main problem in this creek is the drought which occurs in fall.

With the first rains in September or October, Chinook Salmon enter the creek and settle in the holes of the lower stretch and into the creek above HWY403.

They are followed by Brown Trout and Steelhead from Lake Ontario.

The 16 Mile Creek has Creek Chub and other Resident Species.