Angelica Creek is not your average city park.
When the City of Reading purchased the land in 1915, the park was a 12-acre lake impoundment – the legacy of the region’s former ice industry.
Dams have long served an important industrial purpose for society. But it’s easy for such structures to overstay their welcome. Dams don’t just block water, they interfere with the movement of wildlife, impair water quality, and pose public safety risks as they age and decay. As it was with the Angelica Dam and its century-long tenure. In 2001, Tropical Storm Allison tore through Berks County and the dam breached, revealing a sorely degraded floodplain buried under a century’s worth of sediment.
The Angelica Dam was never rebuilt. Instead, the City of Reading chose to reinvest in the park’s recreational infrastructure and restore the Angelica Creek’s mud-choked floodplain, utilizing its wetland nexus as a natural stormwater mitigation measure.
Angelica Lake following dam breach (2001).
Early restoration of Angelica Creek Park (2006).
View of Angelica Creek Park’s flourishing floodplain (2021) as restoration continues today.
Yellow arrow notes the location of the lake’s former Boat House in all three photos.
Today, following years of restoration and stewardship, Angelica Creek Park is a haven not just for nature enthusiasts, but for a diversity of wildlife. Spring is the perfect time to hit the trails and encounter, from a respectable distance, these animals but now the exhibit space of The Nature Place nature center is offering a new way to meet the denizens of this restored floodplain!
Enter The Nature Place and become a Nature Scene Investigator, a naturalist with the skills to observe, identify, and tell the story of our green spaces without ever meeting its wild residents face-to-face. This immersive learning experience teaches visitors how to observe and collect the clues left behind by wildlife, identify these animal signs, and then put these clues into context to understand the bigger picture.
Check for clues throughout The Nature Place to match wildlife with their proper home or identify and even create your own animal tracks using Pocket Naturalist Guides and kinetic sand. Visitors can let their imaginations run wild by creating their own Nature Scene Investigation story using magnetic playing pieces. Don’t forget to leave your story behind for other visitors to enjoy!
Reading animal signs not only builds scientific thinking, it connects you to Angelica Creek Park’s ongoing recovery story. Every print, every shed, every nest is evidence of life returning to a healing landscape, and your observations help us all understand and protect this place.
Plan Your Visit Today!
The Nature Place
575 Saint Bernardine Street
Reading, PA 19607
Open Tuesdays and Saturdays
10 am – 3 pm
Now you can take the bus to The Nature Place!
BARTA’s Route 9 provides routine transportation to The Nature Place from Reading and back to Reading (to BARTA’s Transportation Center on Franklin Street) on Mondays through Saturdays.
