Long Lake Provincial Park is located in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. It was initiated in 1981 by then Premier John Buchanan after Halifax's water supply had been shifted from the Spruce Hill/Long Lake/Chain Lakes watershed to the Pockwock Lake watershed near Hammonds Plains. The park, formally established in 1984, constitutes the bulk of these former watershed lands. Other portions were deeded to the municipality of Halifax, and the area around the Chain Lakes is still administered by the Halifax Regional Water Commission, since the Chain Lakes remain the city's emergency water supply.
History The lands included within the present park boundaries have had a long history of human use, including logging, several farms and many small granite quarries which provided the stones for many of the 19th century buildings in downtown Halifax."Park History", Long Lake Park Association The entire area has been logged extensively in the early part of the 19th century, but a few scattered old growth trees remain.
Long Lake was central to the development of Halifax's water supply. Civil Engineer Charles Fairbanks surveyed the lakes around Halifax in 1845 and picked Long Lake as the best water supply for the city's first water system."Proposed Halifax WaterWorks, 1845", Featured maps and plans, Halifax Municipal Archives In 1848, an earthen dam was constructed at the south end of the lake raising and greatly enlarging it. A canal, later replaced by a pipeline, connected Long Lake to the nearby Chain Lakes and formed Halifax's principle water supply. In 1869, Spruce Hill Lake, in the south part of the park was also dammed to provide water for another pipeline called "the hi-level pipeline" which supplied water to the higher parts in Halifax's North End. In 1877, the earthen dam was replaced a new and larger dam made of granite which raised the lake further.H.W. Johnston, "Halifax water works", Proceedings and Transactions of the Nova Scotian Institute of Science, 1908, 12(1), pp. 75 and 83. These formed the core of Halifax's water supply until 1977.
The north eastern side of Long lake formed an important road junction of the St. Margaret's Bay and Prospect bay roads leading to Halifax in the First World War and was fortified with trenches and machine gun emplacements. This fortification is known as Chain Lake Position - Locality 2 HRM Archives document number (BB1-1-4863) [City Engineer's Office] No. BB1-1-4863 Dated: September 3, 1914
In order to protect the water quality, about of land was left "virtually untouched" into the 1970s. In the years leading up to the 1977 commissioning of the new Pockwock water supply system, concern began to mount over the fate of the old watershed lands, which were considered to have high ecological and recreational value. Residents feared that the area would be spoiled by suburban development.
A regional plan adopted in July 1975 proposed that the watershed lands would form one of seven new regional parks in the Halifax-Dartmouth area.
The watershed lands were acquired by the province in 1981 and put under the management of the Department of Natural Resources for use as a provincial park. Long Lake Provincial Park was formally created by Order in Council (OIC) 84-1189 on October 9, 1984, comprising part of the old watershed lands. Application was altered (by the withdrawal of ) by OIC 93-364 on April 14, 1993.
Management Long Lake Provincial Park is controlled by the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) of the Government of Nova Scotia. It is managed in part by a non-profit community group, the Long Lake Provincial Park Association (LLPPA), founded in 1987. In 2003, DNR entered into consultation with LLPPA on the development of a park management plan which was completed in 2008 and subsequently adopted for park management purposes.
In early 2015, the Long Lake Provincial Park Association started to build accessible walking and cycling trails on the east side of the lake near Northwest Arm Drive (Dunbrack Street) in Spryfield. Known as the Lakeview Trail, these were constructed under a formal agreement between the association and the provincial government. There are now approximately of wide multi-use trails that lie along the east side of Long Lake, together with a loop around Withrod Lake. Benches are installed along the trail and members of the public can have plaques installed on the benches. There is also a parking lot and a washroom across from the Cowie Hill Road. Another parking lot has been added along with a kayak/canoe launch at the location of the old pumphouse on Old Sambro Road across from Schnare Street.
On behalf of Bicycle Nova Scotia and the mountain bike community in general Randy Gray submitted a Mountain Biking Management Plan to be included either in the main body or as an appendix to the Management Plan. This was submitted after about six years of involvement and consultation with the Long Lake Park Association's Board of Directors and the Long Lake Park Association's Management Plan Committee. It can be read here: Mountain Bike Management Plan Submission. The Department of Natural Resources did not include this in its draft plan.
Long Lake has been designated by the Department of Natural Resources and Renewables as a "conservation-oriented" provincial park and can be viewed as an "urban wilderness", even though much of its area has been altered by previous human activities and uses. It is anticipated that no campgrounds or other high-impact projects will be developed in the park in the foreseeable future. This is in contrast to an aborted early plan to develop a resort area and artificial beach on the west side of Long Lake. An abandoned roadbed stretching part of the way between Long Lake and the Old Sambro Road is a residue of this earlier plan. Extensive erosion along part of this roadbed has resulted in a strip of exposed bedrock which has been dubbed the "scar road" and is easily visible from the air. Most of the park is designated as a "resource conservation zone" in the park's management plan. The plan also identified a wetland area as an environmental protection zone, while two small selected areas were designated for "resource development". One of these contains the canoe/kayak launch area near Schnare Street (described above) along with a short loop trail.
Long Lake Provincial Park Association managed the Lakeview Trail area under a 10-year agreement that expired in October 2025. This was replaced by a new, five-year agreement between DNR and the Spryfield Business Commission that came into effect in April 2026. LLPPA remains responsible for helping to manage the park as a whole.
Location and access points
Long Lake Provincial Park is bordered by the Old Sambro Road on the east, Dunbrack Street (formerly Northwest Arm Drive) on the NE, Watershed Commission lands bisected by the St. Margaret's Bay Rd. on the north, Prospect Road on the west, and the Terence Bay Wilderness Area to the south. It can be viewed from: Dunbrack Street between the Spryfield exit on the St. Margeret's Bay Rd., and the Drive's termination on the Old Sambro Rd., the Old Sambro Rd. between Dunbrack Street and its intersection with Leiblin Drive and from the Prospect Road, for a brief section just beyond Exhibition Park.
About 20 entrances to the park can be identified, including: several along the St. Margaret's Bay Rd. (including from the parking lot operated by Halifax Regional Municipality near the Prospect Rd. exit), 4 or 5 off Dunbrack Street, most notably the old road across from Peter Saulnier Drive, which goes past Withrod Lake to some of the more popular swimming spots on Long Lake, from two parking lots maintained by Long Lake Provincial Park Association situated on Dunbrack Street at Cowie Hill Road and at Old Sambro Road near Schnare Street, a path from the grassy area at the dam at the end of Dentith Rd., an access road from Old Sambro Road to the south end of the dam on Long Lake, both ends of a now decommissioned old road (sometimes called The Old Coach Road) that ran from the Old Sambro Rd. to Goodwood, the Goodwood entrance has a path leading to Harrietsfield, past Spruce Hill Lake, but actually getting to Harrietsfield via this pathway is difficult because access to Harrietsfield is blocked by private property, the old road which goes from Harrietsfield to the Spruce Hill Lake dam, 2 or 3 paths which terminate on private property in Harrietsfield, and an old road going from the Exhibition Park to the Pipeline Trail (see below).
There is room along the roadside at a few of the more frequently used informal entrances for 2 to 4 vehicles. In addition, there are three parking lots: the one built by the Water Commission near the west end of Long Lake accessible from the St. Margaret's Bay Road, the relatively large lot maintained by the Long Lake Provincial Park Association off Dunbrack Street, and their smaller lot near Schnare Street. A canoe-kayak-paddle board launch area is associated with this smaller parking lot. The management plan had proposed that another parking lot be built off the Old Sambro Rd, but this component of the plan has been shelved. There has been discussion with the city for use of a portion of the Exhibition Park lands for parking in association with a major park access point there, as proposed in the park's management plan.
The northern portion of Long Lake Provincial Park (north of Long Lake itself) and the adjacent Water Commission lands between the park's boundaries and the St. Margaret's Bay Rd. is home to a network of informal narrow single-track mountain bike trails that is noteworthy for its challenging terrain. Many of the trails are organized into a series of loops (approximately of trail) that can be ridden a number of ways. Most of these trails are unmarked and are generally inconsistent with the park's management plan. This northern hardwood-dominated portion of Long Lake Provincial Park receives most of the park's visitors.
Hydrology
Long Lake Provincial Park is home to a number of lakes and ponds. The eponymous Long Lake, with an area of , is the largest. It was created in the 19th century when a wooden dam was built on McIntosh Run, causing rising water levels to connect two pre-existing lakes, Cocked Hat Lake and Beaver Lake. The resultant Long Lake has a maximum depth of 30 metres.
The park's second-largest water body, Spruce Hill Lake, was formed in a similar manner. A dam was built on Spruce Lake in 1867, connecting it to nearby Fosses Hill Lake. Today, the resulting Spruce Hill Lake is large, and has a maximum depth of 12 metres.
Other lakes in the park include Witherod Lake () and Narrow Lake ().
Park usage
The park is used by a number of overlapping groups, including: Mountain bikers, who developed a trail system between 1994 and 1999. However, the number of bikers has declined significantly since about 2001, when trail systems began to be created elsewhere in the area. Hikers: folks simply out for a walk in the woods. Most hikers again use this same small northern portion of the park, but some make use of the older network of old roads and trails in the much larger portion south of Long Lake. Dog walkers: Walking dogs on leash along trails in the park is permitted under park regulations and this is a popular activity. Despite prohibition of unleashed dogs in provincial parks, Long Lake Provincial Park had been popular for off-leash dog walking in the Halifax area at one time. The activity was mostly in the area within 20-minutes walk of the parking lot on St. Margaret's Bay Road, mentioned above. The dog-walking pattern has evolved in recent years as a result of new trail development and greater awareness of provincial park regulations that prohibit this activity.