The Darlington Hiking Trail in south-central Pennsylvania runs over a seven-mile trajectory going east-west from the Susquehanna River to the Appalachian Trail, where the path turns into the Tuscarora Trail. The Darlington path actually predates the Appalachian Trail, having its origins from 1908, when people who began the Pennsylvania Alpine Club (such as the famed […]
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The area comprising Pine Grove Furnace, near where this photo was taken, was practically clearcut in the 19th century as the lucrative iron works industry increased its influence. Many of the waterways were also harnessed in service to the area’s iron forges. In 1912 and 1913, the South Mountain Mining & Iron Company sold thousands
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These images are from the northern terminus of the Tuscarora Trail, a 252-mile path from south-central Pennsylvania to the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. In the 1960s, the security of the Appalachian Trail was jeopardized by commercial land owners. Future-minded members of the Appalachian Trail Conservancy began work on the Tuscarora Trail as a potential
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In south-central Pennsylvania’s Pine Grove Furnace State Park lie the ruins of one of three secret interrogation camps in the continental United States for prisoners of World War II. You are looking on the first slide at the remains of a large mess hall. Camp Michaux was originally built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the
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Along a particularly rocky portion of the Tuscarora Trail in Perry County, Pennsylvania, is situated a 3,037-acre wildlife sanctuary established by Florence W. Erdman in memory of her mother. The F.J. Reineman Wildlife Sanctuary dates from 1966, and the trust establishing this land gave it to Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, which is just near
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You are looking at an ecological transformation: what you see here is the former Gunter Valley Dam, which used to block Trout Run in the Tuscarora forest of south-central Pennsylvania. The reservoir from the dam supplied the community in Shippensburg with water from the early 1960s, when it was built, until about 2010, when engineers
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Since the year 2000, the Audubon Society has been involved with the site shown here called Hawk Watch. Located at Waggoner’s Gap along the Kittatinny Ridge just north of the town Carlisle in south-central Pennsylvania, Hawk Watch has a legacy of being a major corridor for thousands of hawks, eagles, and falcons who traverse across
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In the far north-central region of Pennsylvania lies Cherry Springs State Park, an amazing resource that shows how important civil planning can be for enabling the natural world to profit future generations.The area’s old-growth forests were clearcut in the late 19th- and early 20th- centuries, and an airport was built there in 1935 — inauspicious
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Worlds End and Loyalsocks are magnificent and adjacent Pennsylvanian State Parks in the north-central part of the state. Thanks to the work of the Civilian Conservation Corps, Worlds End’s forests were replanted, and now Hemlock, Yellow Birch, and Red Maple join other tree species in a remarkably diverse ecology. The American environmentalist and state governor
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Near Big Spring State Park in central Pennsylvania lies the Hemlocks Natural Area. Made up of about 120-acres of rare old-growth forest, the region became a National Natural Landmark in 1972. There, Hemlock trees over 100 feet tall and hundreds of years old grow amidst tulip poplar, black gum, oak, and basswood trees.A small stream
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The landscape shown here is part of a vast and ecologically diverse ecoregion known as the Chiuahuan Desert. In the second image, a map shows its expansive territory, which encompasses about 250,000 square miles (647,500 km), making it the largest desert in North America.An unusual feature of this very young ecoregion (only about 9,000 years
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This eastern-facing plateau at the Dolly Sods Wilderness Area in West Virginia is part of the Allegheny Front, a ridge-line of mountains that make up the eastern Continental Divide. To the west, water flows into the Mississippi River. To the east, it flows into Chesapeake Bay — and it almost looks like you can see
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The Dolly Sods Wilderness Area in West Virginia is almost 72 square kilometers of protected lands. The ecology is unique — much of the area is between 2,000 and 4,000-foot elevation, and is filled with high-altitude marshy bogs, red spruce forests, and windswept boulders. But it did not look like this 100 years ago.In the
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For some reason I thought Virginia’s First Landing State Park evoked a _The Pirates of the Caribbean_ vibe. With its dense canopy of bald Cyprus trees emerging from the swamps, the forest’s beauty was accompanied with the sounds of frogs, birds, and cicadas.First Landing, like so many other spots of preserved forest in this country,
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A lovely chapter in human history was undertaken with the formation and development of south-eastern Virginia’s Back Bay Natinal Wildlife Refuge. Formed in 1938 to provide a safe migration zone for migratory bird species, the Back Bay NWR was doubled in size to include over 9,000 acres in the 1980’s as the Virginia Beach area
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Fowler’s State Park is another example of the good work done to heal clearcut land and create wild spaces during the Great Depression. Located in south-central Pennsylvania, it is a 104-acre state park now, but was leveled in the first decade of the 20th century by a lumber company. Thanks to the Works Progress Administration,
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These are the white-capped rapids of the Youghiogheny River in the Pennsylvania State Park called “Ohiopyle.” One of the guides from our rafting trip there this weekend said the name came from a time when folks from the flat-land state of Ohio drove their cars too fast down one of the many mountainous roads and
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Sitting almost 1,400 feet/430 meters above sea level in the Poconos Mountains is this jewel of a 44-acre lake called Sunfish Pond. No roads lead there: you have to hike in to see it. A glacial lake, formed as the last Ice Age was ending, Sunfish Pond is a tranquil and lovely element of the
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66 million years ago, there was a Very Bad Day for nearly everyone on the planet. That’s when the asteroid responsible for ending the age of the dinosaurs crashed into the Yucatan Peninsula and destroyed about 78% of all species.This picture from Trinidad Lake State Park in Colorado shows one of the places where the
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The Hocking Hills region of south-eastern Ohio is a jewel of an area — ravines, caves, and stone walls interweave throughout old-growth forest. Water is everywhere: streams, small cataracts, and waterfalls echo in many parts of the forest.The area was formed millions of years ago, when the Appalachian Mountains were eroding and the shallow seas
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