Mark S. Burnham is a day-use recreation park only with no campsites available. It once served as the main woodlot of the Burnham family estate, who gave the land to the province with the wish that "people would continue to make their way to this quiet spot." Here you'll find majestic stands of forest -- some of the oldest surviving stands of beech, maple, elm and hemlock in Ontario -- towering to heights of 30 metres.

The topography is dominated by numerous drumlins. Drumlins are smoothly contoured, oval-shaped hills of boulders and other sediment deposited by glaciers as they retreated. The park is in the middle of the Peterborough Drumlin Field, which contains more than 3,000 of these glacial remnants.
Chipmunks, red squirrels and birds such as ruffed grouse, flicker, chickadee, nuthatch and thrasher are the main wildlife in the park.