A new building for outdoor education will open Saturday with a family-friendly celebration at Ankeny Hill Nature Center.
It’s the latest expansion for the two-year-old complex of trails, classrooms, play areas and education sites located 11 miles south of Salem at Ankeny National Wildlife Refuge.
The newly-completed David B. Marshall Outdoor Classroom is located at the southern end of the center, on the banks of Peregrine Marsh. A ribbon-cutting celebration is planned for 1-2 p.m. on Saturday, while outdoor activities for kids and a native plant giveaway is from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.
New building adds additional space for school trips
The new 1,000 square foot classroom includes a teaching space with capacity for 35 students and a porch that extends over the marsh. Students will be able to study pond water with microscopes and other equipment, refuge officials said.
It will be the second classroom at the nature center. Mark Gehlar Hall, just a half mile up the hill and connected by a trail, can fit around 40-45 students. The nature center hosts two to three school groups per week.
“(This opening) is super exciting because it adds to our capacity to host more and larger classrooms,” said Sam Bartling, visitor services manager for the Willamette Valley National Wildlife Refuge Complex. “We’ll have a lot more space for larger schools or multiple groups of smaller classes or homeschool groups that come out on the same day. It’s especially nice to have it open for spring, when the weather gets nice and we get a ton of schools visiting.”
The building isn’t just for schools. Any time class isn’t in session, the building will be open to anyone hiking or exploring the area for photography or wildlife watching. The porch can serve as a bird blind for photographers.
“It’s a cool, rustic building right on the water’s edge,” said Mike Williams, communications officer for the Salem Audubon Society and Ankeny Hill Nature Center. “It’ll make a great place to sit down and have a picnic or photograph birds on the marsh.”
The building cost roughly $450,000, with funding coming from the U.S Fish & Wildlife Service, Salem Audubon Society and Friends of the Willamette Valley National Wildlife Refuge Complex. The groups have raised and spent around $4 million on the nature center all totaled.
“There’s no doubt that it’s the gem of what we do,” Williams said of Salem Audubon’s involvement.
Both classrooms can be reserved for school groups at: ankenyhillnaturecenter.org.
Celebration for a sunny weekend
With the forecasted nice weather, the public is invited to a morning of events leading up to the ribbon-cutting. Beginning at 10 a.m. on Saturday, the nature center is hosting “Winter Wildlife Field Days.”
It will include activities for kids including a station where they can “crawl through a mole tunnel,” Bartling said. “It’ll be a tunnel of shredded paper, meant to resemble how moles tunnel through the dirt.”
There will also be birding walks, native plant and magnifying glass giveaways and other activities at multiple booths at the nature center.
Who was David B. Marshall?
The new outdoor classroom is named for David B. Marshall, a longtime champion for Oregon wildlife who played a big role in the 1965 establishment of the Ankeny, Baskett Slough, and William L. Finley National wildlife refuges. Marshall is often known as the “Dean of Oregon Birders” in part for his co-authorship of “Birds of Oregon, A General Reference” — the first complete reference work on the subject.
“His conservation legacy will live on through classroom nature and environmental education for future generations,” a news release said.
Nature center continues to lure visitors
The Ankeny Hill Nature Center has continued to become a destination, both for outdoor recreation and schools.
The center features hiking trails with education nodes, a nature play area and the two classrooms.
About 1,500 people visit the center each month along with the school visits. Local volunteers play a big role for both user groups.
“Even on lousy rainy or even snowy days, people are coming out,” Williams said.
Williams said one group that has taken full advantage of the center has been homeschool groups.
“We didn’t expect that, but it works out really well with the groups of homeschoolers who have kind of banded together and use the center for a lot of their science curriculum,” Williams said.
Many parents bring their kids for the nature play area or short hikes, before traveling off to other hikes within the refuge, such as the popular Rail Trail. Groups of road bikers make use of the parking lot as a starting point to ride the roads around the refuge, he said.
“A lot of families are just looking for something to do, and it’s a place where kids can connect with nature,” Williams said.
“Until you’ve seen several thousand geese rise up at once and take off, you can’t explain it. The nature center offers a different kind of outdoor education experience that a lot of kids don’t have regular access to,” Williams added.
It’s also been a place to bring more diverse groups together in the outdoors, with bilingual birding walks and classes.
“The nature center has opened connections to a lot of diverse communities, which is good for everybody,” Williams said.
A long and winding journey to completion
The nature center, which opened in 2022, was a long time in the making and came together through a marriage of opportunity and need for Salem Audubon Society and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
In 2004, longtime Salem businessman Mark Gehlar, co-founder of Oregon Fruit Products Co., made a $1.35 million bequest to Salem Audubon to create a nature center.
“He was excited about the prospect of a place for people in all stages of life (to have) access to nature,” Paul Gehlar, Mark’s son, told the Statesman Journal in 2016. Mark Gehlar passed away in 2005.
The original idea was to put the center at Salem Audubon Nature Reserve in West Salem — land also donated by Gehlar. The problem was the land was too small.
In searching for a new site, the group considered a dozen different places but couldn’t find the perfect one.
“As large as $1.35 million seems, it was not enough to fund property acquisition, architectural planning, building costs and long-term maintenance costs,” longtime Audubon member Stephanie Hazen said in 2016.
That’s when the group hit upon a novel idea. Since buying the property was so expensive, why not build the center on public land at Ankeny, one of the most beautiful and bird-rich spots in Oregon?
The Fish and Wildlife Service was excited by the idea, leading to a partnership of funding through federal and private dollars brought in by Salem Audubon, Fish and Wildlife and Friends of the Willamette Valley National Wildlife Refuge Complex.
“When the Fish and Wildlife Service saw that level of buy-in and investment for the community, they really wanted to be a part of that and everyone rallied together,” Bartling said in 2022.
The groups banded together for $3.5 million to complete the first phase of the nature center.
Additional buildings to come at the nature center?
It’s possible an additional building could be built at the nature center, said Williams. It could include an atrium, library and possibly a small gift shop “to support the mission of environmental education,” Williams said.
However, planning for a new building is likely a year or two into the future, he said.
Zach Urness has been an outdoors reporter in Oregon for 15 years and is host of the Explore Oregon Podcast. Urness is the author of “Best Hikes with Kids: Oregon” and “Hiking Southern Oregon.” He can be reached at zurness@StatesmanJournal.com or (503) 399-6801. Find him on Twitter at @ZachsORoutdoors.
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