Abstract: In data gathering application of wireless sensor networks, owing to the heavy traffic, the channel contention and interference between adjacent paths, the congestion would easily happen. The data gather tree algorithm based on congestion control (DGT-CC) is proposed, which generates a shortest path and minimum congestion weight tree through level found, neighbors discovery, heuristic search, and traffic balanced strategy. Theoretical analysis proves the DGT-CC to be convergent, and the routing tree to be a shortest path and minimum congestion weight tree. Simulation results show that the DGT-CC algorithm is superior to the ordinary shortest path tree in terms of success rate of data transfer, network throughput, and delay.