Making Tracks Since 1970
We’ve been working to promote understanding and respect for the natural world since 1970. Here’s how we got our start.
The Land Has a Story to Tell
By the mid-1800s, much of New Hampshire had been cleared for pasture or agriculture. Forests were rare.
New England is full of stories from the past, and Harris Center lands are no exception. The hills of New Hampshire were shaped by retreating glaciers 12,000 years ago. When the ice sheet melted, huge boulders and deep, clear lakes were left behind. For thousands of years, Native tribes spent summers hunting and fishing this area. When European settlers arrived in the 1700s, the massive trees and abundant wildlife helped support their life in this “new world.” By the mid-1800s, two-thirds of New Hampshire’s forest had been cleared for pasture or crops. Much of the lumber was used to build houses and barns and to start new settlements.
Stone walls criss-cross the New England landscape, reminders of a hardscrabble past. (photo © Russ Cobb)
Changes in the Landscape
As plows pushed through the hardscrabble, stones were piled up to protect crops from livestock, mark property lines, and divide pastures. Stone walls and cellar holes remind us of these times.
By 1840, many farmers had given up and headed for growing mill towns and more productive soils in the west.
Retreating to the Country
The Briggs estate, circa 1930.
In the early 1900s, people from crowded cities like New York and Boston began to discover the clean air and quiet nature of the New Hampshire hills. Among them was Dr. L. Vernon Briggs of New York City. Beginning in 1928, he purchased many properties that grew into a 3,000-acre estate near Skatutakee Mountain and Lake Nubanusit.
Vernon’s granddaughter, Eleanor, would visit in the summers. It was on this land, away from the fast-paced life of the city, that Eleanor first connected with the forests, fields, and lakes of New Hampshire.
A Critical Moment
Eleanor Briggs at an early Harris Center event.
In 1966, Eleanor learned that a developer had purchased some of her grandparents’ land and was preparing to subdivide it. At the young age of 29, she decided to save the land and bought it back, piece by piece.
“Remembering what happened to my childhood home on Long Island, N.Y.,” she said, “I began to visualize skyscrapers around Norway Pond. One morning I woke up with a jolt of anxiety and decided the only way to calm down was to do something about my fears.”
The Harris Center namesake.
A Conservation Legacy
Eleanor Briggs established the Harris Center for Conservation Education in 1970, using her grandparents’ house as a conservation education center.
She named the organization after her cat, Harris, who she felt “represented a certain wildness, humor, savvy and strong instinct, all elements needed for a successful environmental education center.”
An Evolving Mission
Naturalist John Kulish in one of his “outdoor classrooms.”
The Harris Center began by offering public educational programs, and soon branched into summer camps and school programming. In 1973, John Kulish inspired many high school students by introducing them to “outdoor classrooms.” He liked to say that he learned ecology while attending the “University in the Woods.” Today, our skilled teacher-naturalists work with nearly 3,000 students in 30 Monadnock Region schools annually, and we offer more than 100 programs and outings for the general public each year.
In the 1980s, Meade Cadot added land protection to the work of the Harris Center, with a particular focus on stitching together a network of connected open space. We have now directly protected more than 24,000 acres and worked with many partners to create a 36,000-acre SuperSanctuary of clustered protected lands in the Monadnock Highlands.
For years, Meade also helped facilitate conservation research on our protected lands; we formally added conservation research to our mission in 2014.
