Message from Friends of the Trailside Nature Museum at Ward Pound Ridge Reservation

We are pleased to bring you a message from the Friends of the Trailside Nature Museum:

The board members of The Friends of Trailside Nature Museum are always so proud to see the annual Leatherman’s Loop! We’d like to take this opportunity to tell you a little bit about ourselves. Our mission is to support the Trailside Museum and the park  as a whole.  Here are a couple of current highlights of  what the board is focused on:

From Jeff Main, Park Manager:

“The reservation is very excited that there is a new white oak tree replacement planted in the meadow near where the Great Meadow Oak fell in 2007. The new tree was planted two weeks in advance of the 2012 Loop. This tree has been made possible by an HBO donation following their filming in the reservation for “Boardwalk Empire,” a donation from the Leatherman’s Loop organization, and a private anonymous donor. The new tree is supported by Friends of The Trailside with a local Arborist who has volunteered their services for maintenance of the tree.

From The Friends of Trailside Nature Museum:

The Beacon , which is the newest and very exciting project undertaken  by The Friends of Trailside and Ward Pounddridge Reservation, is the initiative to reconstruct the Fire Tower at the highest elevation of the Reservation on the Blue trail. This initiative has received good support from the Westchester County Parks, Recreation and Conservation Department.

The expectation is that this will create a new destination for the tri-state area as this will be the only fire-tower in Westchester county. The new fire tower will occupy the same space as the original tower which was built in the 1920s and dismantled in 1982. It will again offer staggering 360 degree views of the surrounding countryside including the Hudson Valley and Long Island Sound.

The new fire-tower would serve as a symbol of the long standing mission of the Friends Group for conservation — in many ways the same as the original fire-tower did for almost a half a century.

Membership as a Friend of Trailside Nature Museum:

If you love the reservation, as we do, and would like to become a member of our “Friends” group, here is some information on how you can do join:
$25.00 (the Salamander level): we will send you our quarterly Friends of Trailside Nature Museum newsletter.

NEW! $100.00 (now you’re a Wood Turtle):  Gives you a sticker for free admission to Ward Pound Ridge Reservation for the calendar year — plus the newsletter! In addition, if you say you’re a Leatherman, we’ll send you a free orienteering map of the park!

There are other levels of membership as well.

Please visit our website – and bear with us as another one of our initiatives is to make that website far more current and user friendly than it is today. Please contact us if you have expertise in this area and would be willing and able to help us achieve this goal.

Congratulations to all of you who are participating in the Leatherman’s Loop – your effort is heroic!

–Friends of The Trailside Nature Museum and Ward Pound Ridge Reservation