Brook trout are introduced into the upper…
1889 CE
Native to Eastern North America in the United States and Canada, it is a species of freshwater fish in the char genus Salvelinus of the salmon family Salmonidae.
Until it was displaced by rainbow trout (1875) and introduced brown trout (1883), the brook trout attracted the most attention of anglers from colonial times through the first one hundred years of U.S. history.
The brook trout was first scientifically described as Salmo fontinalis by the naturalist Samuel Latham Mitchill in 1814.
The specific epithet "fontinalis" comes from the Latin for "of a spring or fountain", in reference to the clear, cold streams and ponds in its native habitat.
The species was later moved to the char genus Salvelinus.
Though commonly called a trout, the brook trout is thus actually one of the chars, which in North America also include the lake trout, bull trout, Dolly Varden, and the Arctic char.