Hawk Mountain is a mountain ridge, part of the Blue Mountain Ridge in the Appalachian Mountain chain, located in central-eastern

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

near

Reading Reading is the process of taking in the sense or meaning of letters, symbols, etc., especially by sight or touch. For educators and researchers, reading is a multifaceted process involving such areas as word recognition, orthography (spelling ...

and

Allentown Allentown may refer to several places in the United States and topics related to them: *Allentown, California, now called Toadtown, California *Allentown, Georgia, a town in Wilkinson County *Allentown, Illinois, an unincorporated community in Taze ...

. The area includes of protected private and public land, including the

Hawk Mountain Sanctuary Hawk Mountain Sanctuary is a wild bird sanctuary in Albany Township and East Brunswick Township, located along the Appalachian flyway in eastern Pennsylvania. The sanctuary is a prime location for the viewing of kettling and migrating raptors ...

. The River of Rocks is visible and accessible from the Sanctuary. The boulders were formed by

periglacial Periglaciation (adjective: "periglacial", also referring to places at the edges of glacial areas) describes geomorphic processes that result from seasonal thawing of snow in areas of permafrost, the runoff from which refreezes in ice wedges and o ...

processes in the

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was finally confirmed in ...

epoch, or "ice age".

History

The mountain was previously called North Mountain because it is across the

Lehigh Valley The Lehigh Valley (), known colloquially as The Valley, is a geographic region formed by the Lehigh River in Lehigh County and Northampton County in eastern Pennsylvania. It is a component valley of the Great Appalachian Valley bound to the no ...

from South Mountain. In 1929, the

Pennsylvania Game Commission The Pennsylvania Game Commission (PGC) is the state agency responsible for wildlife conservation and management in Pennsylvania in the United States. It was originally founded years ago and currently utilizes more than 700 full-time employees and ...

offered hunters $5 for every

goshawk Goshawk may refer to several species of birds of prey, mainly in the genus ''Accipiter'': * Northern goshawk, ''Accipiter gentilis'', often referred to simply as the goshawk, since it is the only goshawk found in much of its range (in Europe and N ...

shot during migrating season, as the birds were considered pests. In 1932, Richard Pough (a birder and photographer from Philadelphia) photographed hundreds of killed hawks and published these photos in ''Bird Lore'', the predecessor to ''

Audubon The National Audubon Society (Audubon; ) is an American non-profit environmental organization dedicated to conservation of birds and their habitats. Located in the United States and incorporated in 1905, Audubon is one of the oldest of such org ...

''. In 1934, after decades of hawk and eagle slaughter on the ridge, Rosalie Edge unilaterally ended the annual shoot by buying the property, changing the name of the mountain to the present one, and turning it into a sanctuary. Hawk Mountain Sanctuary was incorporated in 1938 and began year-round operations in 1946. The Game Commission bounty was terminated in 1951, although birds of prey continued to face threats, including from chemical pesticides like

DDT Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, commonly known as DDT, is a colorless, tasteless, and almost odorless crystalline chemical compound, an organochloride. Originally developed as an insecticide, it became infamous for its environmental impacts. ...

. Bird counts have been taken at Hawk Mountain since the end of World War II, with the Sanctuary counting its millionth raptor on October 8, 1992.

Scouting and Civil Air Patrol

The mountain is also home to the Hawk Mountain Scout Reservation and Hawk Mountain Camp and the Civil Air Patrol's Colonel Phillip Neuweiler Ranger Training Facility (also known as the Hawk Mountain Ranger School).

Gallery

File:Overlook - Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, PA.jpg, Hawk Mountain viewed from a rocky overlook at

Image:River of rocks at the Hawk Mountain, Pennsylvania 2007.jpg, River of Rocks

References

{{Mountains of Pennsylvania Ridges of Pennsylvania Raptor migration sites Landforms of Berks County, Pennsylvania Landforms of Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania