Annual Trail Sale 2024
Annual Trail Sale 2024
Support Pfeiffer Nature Center During One of Its Largest Fundraisers of the Year
Photos /Pfeiffer Nature Center
Everyone loves a spring event, especially when it involves food and music and shopping with various vendors (including a brewery) and a ginormous basket raffle, and did I mention acoustic music and sunshine and fun? All this for an entrance donation of $1 per person!!!! Mark May 11th on your calendar and put the address 1420 Yubadam Road Portville, NY into your GPS. From Ellicottville it will take about 40-45 minutes.
Hint: If you are familiar with Sprague’s Maple Farms, you are right smack in the neighborhood. While we are learning about new locales with odd names, check out Typnahda Mountain, which is where all this fun takes place in the heart of the Enchanted Mountains. Bonus for you if you have ever heard of it! Pfeiffer Nature Center’s Trail Sale is one of the largest fundraisers for the Center, and once you see it, you will see why it’s so important to have a hand (or a dollar) in keeping it open for all to enjoy. Incidentally, since a raffle is involved, and there will likely be small business vendors, you would do well to tuck a bunch of $10s and $20s in your pocket so you don’t miss out on the fabulous raffle items. The Trail Sale will run from 10:00am-6:00pm.
THE HISTORY OF PFEIFFER NATURE CENTER
The 188-acre Pfeiffer Nature Center was established in 1998 by Wendy Pfeiffer Lawrence to honor her father, Timothy N. Pfeiffer. It is located in the Portville community where her mother, Eleanor Knox Wheeler, was born and raised. Wendy wanted to keep alive the wonderful environment that created some of her fondest memories of growing up as a youngster on the property and made clear in her donation that the environment would be preserved, as is, for future generations.
In 2002, the Center’s initial holdings were tripled by a generous gift of 460 acres from a friend of Wendy Pfeiffer Lawrence, Col. Charles Eshelman. Unlike Wendy’s goals for the land, Col. Eshelman had a strong desire that an active management style be used, and that the property be returned to its farming roots if possible. Thus, they found a young family with a desire to caretake and to renovate and move into the original homestead and establish a small farm. There is also a woodlot that is managed, maple trees that are rented during sugaring season, meadows remain open, and they remain on alert to combat invasive species as they appear. In 2006 trails began being built on the east side of Yubadam Road. A year later, 31 trail markers were added made from 100-year-old staves out of a silo from the old farming operations in the past, thus incorporating their historical roots into even the ordinary. Trail maps following these trails can be picked up at the Pfeiffer Visitor Center.
This, from their website: The forests, fields, streams, and ponds on this property are a combination of nature’s handiwork and human influence. The original farmers needed the diversity of landscape for their livelihood, and the Nature Center continues to actively manage the property to retain its character for human and non-human visitors alike. With plenty of transitional zones (the edges of fields and forests, streams, and meadows), wildlife abounds. These edge areas are alive with bird populations spring through fall. Quiet visitors are likely to encounter deer, turkey, bears, raccoons, beavers, otters, muskrats, and a wealth of reptiles, amphibians, and insects.
Pfeiffer Nature Center is a tax-exempt, not-for-profit organization committed to building a foundation of knowledge, understanding and appreciation of the intrinsic values and aesthetic qualities of the natural world while instilling a sense of responsibility and stewardship for the natural world within the global community. The Center is run primarily by three paid individuals, a volunteer board of directors and a score of other volunteers. More than 4,000 individuals attend their programs and over 5,000 hike their trails on their own. For more information go to pfeiffernaturecenter.org.
Side note: While you are in the neighborhood, head back on Route 417 toward Weston’s Mills and take a right turn up Promised Land Road in Portville for an optical illusion that makes you shake your head. Head up the road, go past the 1015 address maker. Turn around and put the car in neutral. If you do it right, the car will travel backward instead of forward, as if you are going up hill. Google it, then try it. Enjoy your Southern Tier adventures!