The Fanwood Nature Center celebrated its 50th anniversary year with a ribbon-cutting Monday night attended by Environmental Center board members and Nature Center volunteers and borough officials. The Nature Center is an eight-acre gem tucked away on Terrill Road between Cray Terrace and La Grande Avenue.
Environmental Commission Chairperson Sandy Redder said the borough purchased the land in 1966 for $66,000. Residents started discussions in 1972 to preserve the parcel, which was a dumping ground at the time.
Over the years, volunteers from the Environmental Commission, formed in 1972, have cleaned out the Nature Center, planted trees and ferns, carved out trails, and built benches. The Center, which opened on September 11, 1974, was created as a “getting away from it all place” and a “pleasant, quiet escape area,” Redder said in quoting a former commission chairman.
“Ever since, past and present, the Nature Center caretakers, the Mayor and our council, and everyone else at Borough Hall, have worked really hard to maintain and continue improving this Nature Center,” Redder said.
As part of the 50th anniversary celebration and with the help of volunteers including the Scouts, bat boxes and birdhouses have been added, benches cleaned and signs refurbished, the trails have been cleaned up, litter picked up, invasive plants removed, and native plants added.
Also, a Trail Maintenance Day was added this year with almost 30 volunteers taking part, Redder said.
Plans in the future call for more boardwalks to be improved, additional bike racks, while continuing the effort to rid the Center of invasive plants.
“This is the one place (in Fanwood) where we actually have some nature,” said Gary Szelc, vice chair of the Environmental Commission. He noted the efforts of the late Dean Talcott, the head of the Commission for many years and the Nature Center’s caretaker.
Mayor Colleen Mahr said one of the reasons she ran for mayor 21 years ago was that there were discussions at the time to build a cell tower on the Nature Center property. She said one of her first official acts as Mayor was passage of a conservation easement “so that nothing ever could happen here.”
“We made sure that the good work that the Environmental Commission, who are the stewards of this property, can continue on in perpetuity,” Mayor Mahr said. “This is a wonderful specialplace in a suburban community in a buildout county that we can come and we can just be close to nature.”
