The Upper Beaver Watershed

This is quite a mixture of winter and summer pictures, but it will give you an impression of the upper watershed, where the Beaver River originates and flows west through rolling countryside.  If you check yesterday's map, you'll see that this is almost half the length of the river.

This is rural farm country, mostly of beef cattle as on this farm, or else farms that have been purchased by non-farmers who want to live in the country and let the land revert to forest.  This was an interesting combination barn, one half with a gambrel roofline, and the other half a simple bank barn.

I was surprised when I took these pictures earlier this winter to see these cattle following a track across the field on a bitterly cold winter's day.  Turns out they were joining the rest of the herd down in a corner of the cedar forest where it was quite sheltered.

You see the river at a lot of road crossings like this.  The river emerges in springs and swamps upstream and gradually builds in size heading west.

With no urban land use, and only a few scattered farms, the river is very clear, and mostly it's flowing through forest or wetland.

About halfway along we come to the village of Feversham, site of an old mill pond - looking somewhat silted up in this picture, but with an old mill building beside the dam in the distance.

I was lucky to spot a Great Blue Heron who hadn't flown away yet when I went down to get photographs two years ago.

Surprisingly, just below the village, the Beaver River flows through a short stretch of deep limestone gorge.  It's been protected as a conservation area, and is known for its ferns.  But it is quite a challenge trying to explore down in the gorge, with a tangle of fallen cedar trees in all directions.

A few concessions below the gorge, the river flows into Lake Eugenia, an artificial lake created by a hydro dam build 100 years ago.  They let the water level down in the winter, so all the old stumps are showing in this picture taken just a few weeks ago.

And just below the lake, the Beaver River flows over Eugenia Falls, into Cuckoo Valley and thence down into the main part of the Beaver Valley.  The escarpment here represents the end of the upper watershed.  Tomorrow the middle valley; check out this series which started yesterday.