Nature interpretation

Pennsylvania Game Commission visit

Researched and Compiled
by Jeremy Scheivert
Education Coordinator
Read Blog Post #1

By 1957 school field trips became common, and groups traveled a noticeable distance.

“We received 1,810 persons in 99 organized groups who came by special arrangement, from local communities, New Jersey, New York, Delaware, and Maryland to enjoy our guided tours or interpretive lectures on the natural history of the mountain,” Broun wrote.

Reading through member updates, I realized this was the same year Broun for the first time referred to his talks as “interpretive.” Interestingly enough it was during that same year that father of interpretation Freedman Tilden published his Interpreting Our Heritage.

Francis Trembley

1964 heralded the first Natural History and Ecology Workshop, a joint venture between Hawk Mountain Sanctuary and Lehigh University. The workshop continued for more than a decade under Sanctuary director and Lehigh University professor Francis Trembley, and represented the continuous use of the Sanctuary as an outdoor learning laboratory.

The next year Maurice Broun’s tenure came to a close but he would leave behind a thriving field trip program. Broun mentioned in 1965 that on one day alone he saw a group of local sixth graders, a Muhlenberg College ornithology class, a group of children from a local State hospital, and a busload of senior citizens from the Philadelphia Center for Older People.



Maurice Broun and Alex Nagy



“By way of contrast, we received more than 200 eager-beaver under-privileged youngsters from Philadelphia. They came in 13 groups from nearby Camp Lighthouse. Most of these boys and girls had never climbed a mountain; they had never seen a deer, nor a hummingbird. New horizons! And a joy to us, to witness the intense interest and pleasure that registered on the faces of these young people from the big city,” he wrote.

Alex Nagy took the reigns as curator in the latter half of the 1960s at the same time Joseph Taylor succeeded Peter Edge as Board President.

“Over 3,000 guests composed of school classes, scouts and adults in 59 organized nature walks consumed much of [Assistant Curator] Fred Wetzel’s time and energy this spring,” Nagy wrote in 1969.