Below Colonial Lake, the stream crosses underneath the Trenton Freeway and the Delaware and Raritan Canal before finally reaching its terminus at the Assunpink Creek.

Much of the West Branch Shabakunk Creek's course between Pennington Road and Spruce Street is canalized due to heavy commercial development, with at least one structure built directly over the stream.

Under the command of Colonel Edward Hand, a successful delaying action was fought at the Shabakunk Creek near Lawrence Road which prevented British forces from reaching Trenton before nightfall on January 2, 1777.

As a result, a $4.2 million flood and erosion control project was initiated to stabilize the banks and create storm water detention basins along the more heavily developed central and southern portions of the creek's course.

For many decades the airport was extremely active, having dozens of planes stationed there, while hundreds of takeoffs and landings were recorded each week, for many years exceeding 100 per day.

Long-term residents living in the immediate area reported to independent river keepers who were monitoring the Creek's high mercury levels, that it had been the long-term practice of workers at the airport to dump cans and containers filled with changed-out oil and other aviation fluids, into holes and ditches that were dug both on the Airport's premises and across Lawrenceville-Pennington Road, in or near the fields where the sources springs and marshy areas of the East Main Branch of the Shabakunk Creek originated.

[9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16] Ground water contamination from the Twin Pines Airport's leaking underground tanks and burying of petroleum and industrial fluid wastes are seen as being the main source of the high levels of mercury and methylmercury, as well as other heavy metals, that have been measured in the fish and bed sediments of the upper reaches of the Main Branch and of the Shabakunk Creek and its three tributaries which originate on or in close proximity to the contaminated lands of the Twin Pines Airport and the adjoining fields across Lawrenceville-Pennington Road.