Ellis Property

The Ellis Property is located 1 km (0.6 miles) north of Ball’s Falls Conservation Area, just west of the Jordan Historical Museum in the Town of Lincoln. Twenty Mile Creek traverses this 23-hectare (58-acre) property, which contains a variety of escarpment cliff features, two large ponds, diverse Carolinian species, Lake Ontario plain forest and several archaeological sites. The Ellis Property was generously donated to the Ontario Heritage Trust by Art Ellis in 1984.

Heritage significance

The Ellis Property lies within the Jordan Escarpment Valley, which is a provincially significant Life Science Area of Natural and Scientific Interest (ANSI) within the deep-incised valley of Twenty Mile Creek. This property is also recognized as an Environmentally Significant Area (ESA) and designated as an Escarpment Natural Area under the Niagara Escarpment Plan.

The property is dominated by broadleaf forests with smaller stands of mixed and successional forests. It also contains excellent examples of diverse Carolinian flora and fauna. There are 13 provincially rare, eight regionally rare and 20 locally rare flora species present on the Ellis Property. Rare flora and fauna observed on the property include Nebraska sedge, pignut hickory, eastern spiny softshell turtles, barn owls and many others.

As of 2006, six archaeological sites have been registered: five historical and one Indigenous (Woodland period, 900 BC to AD 1500).