Category:Trexler Nature Preserve

Trexler Nature Preserve 

park in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania (est. 2006)
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Instance of	county park
Location	Lehigh County, Pennsylvania
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40° 39′ 28.08″ N, 75° 37′ 59.16″ W
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The Trexler Nature Preserve is a county park owned and maintained by Lehigh County. The preserve is situated outside of Schnecksville in Lowhill Township and North Whitehall Township. The land that comprises the preserve was originally purchased between 1901 and 1911 by local industrialist General Harry Clay Trexler.

It was originally Trexler's desire to stock the preserve with big game animals such as bison, elk, and deer with the express goal of saving the North American Bison. When Trexler died in 1933, the preserve, by will, passed to the care of Lehigh County. The county assumed title in 1935 and has been in control of the site ever since.

In May 1975, in an attempt to raise awareness of the preserve, the County launched a new initiative to draw visitors—the Lehigh Valley Zoo. Although the zoo returned some public use to the land, the great majority of the preserve remains closed to the general public.

In 2004, Lehigh County suffering from an uncertainty of then-recent budgets, proposed to close the zoo portion of the preserve. A local group, the Lehigh Valley Zoological Society, formed to assume private control of the zoo under a lease arrangement with Lehigh County. The zoo area is now called the "Lehigh Valley Zoo".

Concurrent with the transfer of the zoo to private control, the Trexler Trust brought civil suit against the County of Lehigh demanding, under the terms of Trexler's will, that the entire preserve be opened to public use and that public funds be devoted to that public use. The county, under pressure from the Trexler Trust, acceded to a settlement in 2006. As part of this settlement, Lehigh County agreed to open the entire preserve to public use and to rename the non-zoo portion of the park from the "Trexler Game Preserve" to the "Trexler Nature Preserve."

Since re-opening the entire preserve to public use, extensive efforts have been made to increase passive recreational activities, such as hiking and mountain biking (by building an extensive trail system) and archery hunting and fishing (by changing cull policies and stocking the Jordan Creek).

The Trexler Dam project was first proposed in 1960 as a flood control measure on the Jordan Creek about 8 miles north of Allentown. The Dam was proposed to be built on part of the Trexler Game Preserve, and flood part of it. An 8-mile long lake behind the dam would have required the relocation of two villages aand a state highway.

The dam project was strongly opposed by several groups for about 15 years. In 1977, a non-biding referendum overwhelmingly rejected the project and at that point, the dam project was put on hold by the Delaware Valley River Basin Comission. However it was not until the end of 1989 that the project was formally scrapped.