Blog: What is Hartman Reserve Nature Center? An Introductory Post...

What is ?

I could provide you with a lot of dry facts about Hartman Reserve's history, like the first 56 acres were bought for the YMCA in with the help of John Hartman, then editor of the Courier, to start a camp for kids. I could tell you that the Black Hawk County Conservation Board purchased the land from the YMCA in 1976 to use as a spring board for outdoor education. I could also tell you that Hartman Reserve encompasses more than 300 acres of diverse ecosystems like lowland hardwood forests, upland hardwood forests, wetlands, prairies, and riparian areas, but I am not going to do that. Not today, anyhow.

What I am going to tell you is that Hartman Reserve is a place of respite for the Cedar Valley.  

It is a place where you can escape, if just for a little while, from the fast paced lives we now live. Hartman Reserve is a place where you can reconnect to your roots, and help your children find theirs. Hartman Reserve is a place where you can lose yourself and find yourself, all on the same trail.

What Hartman Reserve is, is many different things, to many different people. Some see us as a place to go walking, others mountain biking, still others fishing, birdwatching, snowshoeing, and the list goes on.

It is my hope, through this blog, to reach out to people who come here all the time, and have never been here before. I want to start a dialogue about where I want to take outdoor education at Hartman Reserve and the rest of Black Hawk County Conservation Board's 8000+ acres of public land, and the direction you would like to see it grow.

Let me hear form you...