The Little Tract Trail

The Little Tract is just one of the thirteen tracts that make up the 1,054 hectare (2,606 acre) Dufferin County Forest.  The white pine in the Little Tract shows what the timber in this area looked like prior to settlement in the 1800s.  In 1870, the clearing near Airport Road held 15 houses for loggers.  A sawmill was located beside the creek.  At that time, the large white pine you see today were too small to be logged.

Since the County purchased the property from Mr. Robert Little in 1971, there has been one small-scale logging operation, at the north end of the Tract.  In 1995, the Little Tract was designated “natural area” as part of the County’s longterm forest management plan.  This means that there is no hunting, fishing, logging, or other resource extraction in this Tract, and only very low impact recreational activities such as hiking and cross-country skiing are permitted.  The Tract is 40.4 hectares (100 acres) in size, and is square in shape (each side is 620 metres or 673 yards long).

Little Tract has a two kilometre interpretive trail with nine stops describing general forest facts; get the interpretive brochure here.