Authored by Kaitlyn Tothero and English Dawson
Now through September, Berks Nature invites you to explore and enjoy learning all about our Berks Nature Preserves in our new ‘The Nature Place’ Exhibit!
Berks Nature owns and manages six public preserves all around Berks County. Two of these preserves – The Ontelaunee Wetlands Preserve and Ephraim Malickson Wildlife Sanctuary (Tekene 2) – just recently opened to the public providing new trails and fresh opportunities to explore the great outdoors!
Our other long-standing preserves include Angelica Creek Park (home of The Nature Place), Neversink Mountain Preserve, Bob’s Woods at Earl Poole Sanctuary, and Gravity Trail.
Angelica Creek Park
Bob’s Woods at the Earl Poole Sanctuary
Ontelaunee Wetlands Preserve
Gravity Trail
Neversink Mountain Preserve
Ephraim Malickson Wildlife Sanctuary (Tekene 2)
Berks Nature partners with Widoktadwen Center for Native Knowledge on various events and community efforts throughout Berks County. As an organization, we are aware that the land that we now protect, own, and manage, is based in Lenapehoking, the traditional homeland of the Lenape People, who are the rightful past, present, and future caretakers of this land. We are grateful for millennia of Indigenous care for this land and water, and seek to learn from Indigenous expertise in living well with All Our Relations.
Berks Nature and our public preserves are located on occupied Lenape land, and we deeply regret the erasure of the Lenape from popular histories of these places.
In addition to the dog-friendly walking trails and Nature Play Zone, The Nature Place has various interactive and educational exhibits as well as a nature store. In 2023, The Nature Place’s exhibit space has been dedicated to these preserves and specifically, the rich history of Neversink Mountain.
Local historian and author (and long-time friend of Berks Nature) Paul Druzba, has provided us with numerous artifacts collected from our Neversink Mountain Preserve. Paul is the author of the book, “Neversink: Reading’s Other Mountain”, which recounts the history of the mountain during its “Resort Years” from 1880 to 1930, when it boasted six resort hotels, and its own electric mountain railroad, all of which are now gone.
Paul’s incredible retelling of Neversink Mountain’s history is available for purchase at The Nature Place store.
Some of these artifacts include melted glass found at the Highland House after it burned down in 1930, a staircase railing from the Klapperthal Pavilion (1901), and miscellaneous garden tools including a garden gate latch and axe head found near a chicken coop at the Glen Hotel!
The Nature Place is also featuring an art gallery by Art Plus Gallery, a non-profit artist cooperative in West Reading. Each piece that is for sale was created at one of our six public preserves (listed above)!
There’s fun for the kiddos too! Build your own train track to help the train get around Neversink Mountain, learn about what makes our preserves unique with our fun-fact guessing game, or “Color Across the Preserves”!
Interested in learning more and exploring all this exhibit has to offer? Join Berks Nature, Art Plus Gallery, and Paul Druzba on Thursday, May 4th for our Berks Nature Preserves Exhibit Reception!
We wonder why Berks Nature is putting “no trail signs” on Neversink Mountain. This impedes Mountain Biking community. The bikers who keep the trails clean. Your signs are unsightly , a waste of supporters funding and a reason I cannot come to donate money to BerksNature.org.
We always appreciate it when we receive such candid feedback from our neighbors and trail users. We’d love to take this opportunity to give you some additional context regarding the complex management decisions involved with stewarding Neversink Mountain.
There are a few reasons why we may close or retire a trail:
One reason is due to a trail’s the proximity to private property. Although we manage numerous acres of Neversink for public use, we do not own the entire mountain. There are several private, residential properties located throughout, many of which are not denoted by fences or signage. It’s important to keep mountain visitors on only sanctioned trails to avoid inadvertently trespassing on private property out of respect for our Neversink Mountain residents.
Equally important to remember is that first and foremost, Neversink Mountain is a nature preserve; as the primary stewards of the mountain, Berks Nature constantly strives to promote biodiversity and overall ecological health of the mountain’s rich and diverse ecosystems. We must balance recreation with ecological integrity, as the two are not always compatible. For example, many unsanctioned trails are not built properly, unintentionally intersect with sensitive wildlife habitats, or are simply too abundant in a given area. Consequently, an overabundance of poorly sited and poorly built trails will create excessive erosion, which hurts Neversink Mountain’s understory and creates pollution for local waterways (too much sediment deposition in a stream will smother the aquatic organisms living within). We will close or retire trails in these circumstances, when they threaten the mountain’s ecological health.
Another way we minimize our disturbance on the mountain is by making use of existing roadways. For example, there is a portion of the Neversink Trail off of 20th Street that doubles as an access road for MetEd, which is one of the reasons this has become a designated trail.
The Reading Eagle has published an article further discussing the problems posed by rogue trails across Neversink Mountain and Mount Penn – it could be a good read to further clarify our stance. Read it here!
As a fellow nature enthusiast who clearly loves their time on Neversink Mountain, we hope this explanation resonates with you. Managing a nature preserve of Neversink’s scope is a complex balancing act, full of compromise. We hope you will continue to find joy on Neversink Mountain.
Hi my name is Bob! Im local and would like to follow up on some real specifics in the follow up to TrailSage. I appreciate Trail Sage, such an awesome ‘Tuber and empathetic steward of the MTB community, asking the same questions that I had and still have. My background is in Risk & Safety Management as Certified Safety Professional, a National Safety Council Award recipient (helping organizations reduce risk), a Berks Country tax payer and an avid local MTB’er. My questions are around the IMBA/Berks Nature joint study. I have studied the IMBA (via BAMBA) and Berks Nature joint study that was conducted a few years back. That encouraged me to become a member of BAMBA and then BTW and support the great work they jointly do on Mt. Penn. I have explored Neversink on foot and on bike – know it like the back of my hand at this point! A gem. There certainly are several left over liabilities on that mountain from times gone by. I am sure the insurance liability premiums that Berks Nature must carry are expensive, especially if people are not kept away from attractive nuisances and inherent hazards that reside on Neversink. I see the great work that BAMBA does to keep Neversink sponsored trails open, they rock! However, upon reviewing the follow up from the IMBA/BAMBA\Berks Nature study, I see very few recommendations acted upon on Neversink. More specifically, after the first year of the study, I fail to see any ongoing or continuous improvements being implemented as result from that study as I write this in October 2024. Well, other than a few signs that are unsightly and a vandals dream.
It would be beneficial for Berks Nature to publicly update and publish the outcome of that study to denote which are and which are not MTB/Hiking trails. While yes, there are poorly built trails from over a hundred years ago that have resulted in fall lines and/or encroach on private property, surely some can be redirected to additional viable single-track trails for the MTB community? I think I know a whole lotta volunteers that would help out….including removing the waste on Neversink Mtn. Let’s talk about the real problem on Neversink, the left over waste from the past hundred years that creates the real hazard. Perhaps this is why some trails are closed and no longer exist? I’d donate my money and time to Berks Nature if we had a commitment to further clean up the old waste on Neversink mountain and have some official & published follow up on the result of the IMBA study. Thank you for your time and I hope Berks Nature cleans up Neversink Mountain and engages local MTB nonprofits to further improve the sustainable of Neversink into the future.