Rouge National Urban Park is a national park in Toronto, Canada.
Rouge National Urban Park overlaps the cities of Toronto, Markham and Pickering and the Township of Uxbridge.
Rouge National Urban Park covers an area of . It is the largest urban protected area in North America. It stretches from Lake Ontario in the south, north to the post-glacial Oak Ridges Moraine in the north.
The park is open with free admission to visitors 365 days per year, though there are camping fees. There are over 12 km of rustic hiking trails in the Toronto and Markham areas of the park, though Parks Canada has plans to significantly expand the trail network and provide a contiguous link from Lake Ontario to the Oak Ridges Moraine. In Toronto, the park is accessible by public transportation by Toronto Transit Commission and GO Transit.
The park has natural, cultural and agricultural landscapes, and is home to over 1,700 species of plants and animals, some of the last remaining working farms in the Greater Toronto Area, rare Carolinian ecosystems, Toronto’s only campground, and human history dating back over 10,000 years, including some of Canada's oldest known Indigenous sites.
Parks Canada offers dozens of educational programs, including Learn-to-Camp, Learn-to-Hike, fire side chats, and other free programming.
The park was established on May 15, 2015.
The human history of the park goes back over 10,000 years. Palaeolithic nomadic hunters, Iroquoian farmers, early European explorers, and the multicultural suburban population that one can see around the park today are all part of this history. Since humans began living in the area of the present Great Lakes-St Lawrence Lowlands in Ontario, many groups of people made the lands and waters now protected in Rouge Park their home. The river and its valleys, uplands, forests and wetlands, along with the animal and plant species that lived here, sustained small nomadic groups, and later on larger, permanent settlements long before the rapid urbanization of the 20th century altered the landscape dramatically.
Rouge National Urban Park is located in the Rouge River, Petticoat Creek and Duffins Creek watersheds. The Rouge River remains the healthiest river that flows through the City of Toronto.
This urban park features numerous fauna such as white-tailed deer, mice, opossums, raccoons, hawks, coyotes, skunks, ducks, beaver, bald eagles, shrews, red foxes, turkeys, weasels, golden eagles, river otters, kestrels, moles, swans, minks, bats, woodchucks, and porcupines.
Main visitor areas in the City of Toronto:
Main visitor areas in the City of Markham:
Main visitor areas in the City of Pickering:
There are no entry fees.
Hiking. It has 13 hiking trails ranging from 500 m to 5 km and from easy to challenging. The park's hiking trails travel through a variety of landscapes, including meadows, forests, wetlands, and farmland.