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Success Stories

Escape to the Outdoors

Educational programs for the public and visiting schools, scouts, and special interest groups are standard fare at the preserve. One of the most popular programs is the annual maple sugaring operation, which gives visitors a look into the history and tradition of making maple syrup.

Nature’s Gentle Power

What happens when people neglect what they’ve built? At Housenick Park, people can watch it happen. The majesty of the seasons, combined with the impermanence of building materials, offers a four-season show with free admission. It’s my secret pleasure, a jewel of almost one hundred acres only five miles north of my home. Once the estate of Archibald Johnston, the city of Bethlehem’s first mayor, it’s now a public park in the heart of the Lehigh Valley.

Site for a Popular Tradition

Lazybrook Park has proven to be an amazing venue for the Tunkhannock Rotary Harvest and Wine Festival. This event, held annually in October, has been an extremely successful and popular tradition for local people, in addition to folks from Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and Delaware.

A Community Celebration

This 111-acre park has three baseball fields, which provide ample space for egg hunts for toddlers through fourth graders. In addition, we are able to use the football fields for crafts, family-friendly games, face painting, and more. The park provides a lush and scenic background for photos with the Easter Bunny as well. Afterwards, kids enjoy time on the large playground that is suitable for small and big kids alike.

Leaps and Bounds

It’s not only the sports leagues that use the park every day. I see moms and grandparents at the playground and open field. The Girl Scouts come and work on their craft projects on the picnic tables that the Boy Scouts volunteered to paint to earn their community badges. The 4-H kids shoot off their bottle rockets there. You can set your watch by the group of women that walk the park every morning.

Community Pride

With a master plan in place, efforts turned to a capital campaign to generate funding for the development of the park. With donations from its citizens, businesses, and civic organizations, combined with a matching grant from the Keystone Fund, groundbreaking got underway in 2009.

Simple but Effective

Latimore Township is predominantly a rural, agricultural area, and the preservation of open, green spaces has been one of the supervisors’ primary goals while in office. The township park is part of that larger plan of caring for the natural environment because it protects a large green space from unwanted development while still providing for public use. Supervisor Woody Myers has taken great care to plant more trees, shrubs, and flowers around the park and has installed several bird houses along the walking trail.

Service and Learning

When our students leave Antietam Lake Park at the end of a day of service, they are tired, dirty, and newly inspired. They understand that places like Antietam can show to generation after generation the value of the natural world. Parks can help connect people to the natural spaces around them, and hopefully instill in people an understanding of the need for all of us to be better stewards of the planet we live on.

Childhood Memories

Our mothers would cook their specialties at home and pack them in their baskets. Dads would bring the horseshoe posts and shoes, the baseball gear, volleyball net, and the badminton net, and set them up for all to play. The kids brought hula hoops, bikes, and bathing suits.

An Unexpected Turn

I was one of those volunteers. I was there that very first day, and every day thereafter. The camaraderie, the pride, and the joy of building this park is something I will never forget. Most people who visit this park see it for the beauty that it is today. When I look at it, I still see the old farm field that it was and remember the great times I had working with the great people who were dedicated to completing this project. At the time, we had no idea how much it would impact our small community.

For Years to Come

The Keystone Fund has helped the township fund the purchase of the property, create the master plan for the park, and make improvements in the first phase of construction. These improvements included the aforementioned soccer fields, two pavilions, and one of the walking trails, as well as electric service, public water service, and irrigation lines for the fields.

Finding Peace

I am a yoga teacher, and I lead yoga walks at Wildwood. The combination of walking and yoga in a natural environment can result in a very special experience! I enjoy introducing people to Wildwood through the yoga walks, and I believe everyone needs to connect with nature for a healthier lifestyle. Leading the meditation at the end of the yoga walks is my favorite part of the activity. Everyone seems so much more at peace!

Giving Back

I was born and raised in Lebanon County, just a few blocks away from the current Lebanon Valley Rail Trail (LVRT). I can remember walking along these tracks as a kid when the trains were still running and iron ore was being shipped to the various operations throughout America. In 1972, the trains stopped running due to flooded iron mines after Hurricane Agnes. Then in 1999 Lebanon Valley Rails to Trails began to develop the land into what is now the LVRT. When I finally decided to retire, I felt a need to try to give something back to the community, and helping on the trail seemed to fit what I was looking for.

What Sets a City Apart

Along with an estimated 1.1 million annual visitors, I have personally walked, jogged, bicycled, fished, cross-country skied, kayaked, and climbed cliffs in the park. Best of all, I currently help plan and execute large and small infrastructure and maintenance projects. On a lovely day any visitor will encounter people of all ages and backgrounds reveling in the opportunity to be outdoors away from the noise, press, heat, or cold wind of the concrete, asphalt, and steel metropolis.

Hawk Haven

The adult hawks remained at Hildacy throughout the year. Many red-shouldered hawks migrate south in the fall, but apparently this pair was able to continue to find enough food to sustain them through the cold months. When spring arrived, the pair constructed a new nest less than a hundred yards from the Natural Lands Trust office building. During the construction of the nest, both birds were often seen and heard flying over the office and defending their territory.

Two Miles Closer

But the true wonder of the new Big Woods Trail is its accessibility. Designed to expand recreational activities to more people, this trail is hard-paved at a 5% slope. Unlike the rocky and muddy trails throughout the area, this trail is wheel-friendly and opens up hikes to wheelchairs, strollers, and other tools of limited mobility. As an educator, this enables me to bring more people out into the field for interpretive walks and lessons, which thrills me.

In the Heart of the City

During a particularly exciting bird walk along the creek with community residents on May 10, 2014 I was amazed by the sheer numbers of migrating songbirds that we were finding– from Worm-eating, Blue-winged, and Bay-breasted Warblers to Gray-cheeked Thrushes and a White-eyed Vireo–when up popped a Red-headed Woodpecker. Our excitement nearly tripled as we got to see this beautiful but rare bird for an extended period of time.

Food and Family

The Yardley Farmers’ Market, started by community volunteers, is held in Buttonwood Park every Saturday morning from 9 AM to 1 PM from May to October. 2017 will be our third year. Families and neighbors come together to shop for local food, enjoy the daily entertainment, and meet up with other friends and family. It’s the perfect location for the market, and the market could not exist without it.

Journey Towards Sustainability

One of the unforeseen benefits with this project is how it has engaged the staff in making energy consumption reductions throughout the building. The staff started calculating the energy demands of specific areas of the building and started targeting energy-efficient lighting upgrades to those areas. This story was publicized in the local news and the park was contacted by a local electrical retailer who wanted to get involved in our efforts to reduce consumption in the building. As it turned out in the end, the local retailer donated another $20,000 in LED lighting upgrades to the building, which will not only lower our total electrical needs over time, but ultimately reduce man-hours in maintenance with the longer lifespan of new LED bulbs.

Fixing a Canal

The aqueduct structure failed in April 2016 and we currently have two 50-inch diameter plastic corrugated pipes with coffer dams on both ends over the aqueduct to allow us to bypass water over the structure. Without the bypass, we would not be able to water the canal from the Raubsville area down to Centre Bridge. This aqueduct is crucial to canal operations, because it allows us to send water through the canal for approximately 24 miles down to Centre Bridge. With the temporary bypass in place we can still send water south, but only at approximately half of what our normal flow would be.