Genung Nature Preserve: from farm to forest

On Route 38, just in the village of Freeville, there is a small gravel clearing on the side of the road with a small green sign and a single bench. Those curious enough to stop will see the entrance to the Genung Nature Preserve, known for its dense forest and trails right along Fall Creek.

While the sign at the entrance tells a bit of its origins, it doesn’t tell the whole story, which is that this “hole in the wall” nature preserve used to be farmland long before it was donated for its current usage.

The story of the nature preserve starts with longtime Freeville residents Albert and Mildred Genung, parents of Mildred “Millie” Sherwood, who would eventually donate the family land to the Finger Lakes Land Trust in 2005.

Albert’s father, Dr. Homer Genung, was Freeville’s first family doctor, and he established the family farm in the late 1800s. When Albert and Mildred owned the land in the early 1900s, they continued to use it for farmland. But Albert also had a strong interest in nature, as Sherwood’s daughter Jan Bridgeford-Smith explained.

“My grandfather was interested in nature and in actually studying nature in an amateur way from the time he was a boy,” Bridgeford-Smith said. “Our family still has journals that he recorded for years and years and years. He would record things like the temperature and weather.”

As Sherwood’s niece Rachel Dickinson explained, after Sherwood took over the land, she and her family stopped using it as farmland, which led to quite the transformation.

“We just left the land alone, and it just grew out,” Dickinson said. “If you looked at that land now, you would never think it had once been pasture land up until about 1940. So, what’s on it now is fairly new growth of forest land, but it looks like very mature forests. And so, by just leaving it alone and letting it grow, it’s now turned into a place for all sorts of different species of birds and mammals.”

By the time the turn of the century came around, the land had completely changed from farmland to forest, and Sherwood decided to donate the land to the Finger Lakes Land Trust.

“She wanted to preserve something in the name of her parents,” Dickinson said. “Our family has lived in the village for six generations now. And I think that everyone who was in our family was very tied into the early founding of the village and families of the 19th century. And so, having this longevity with a village seemed like a way to put a family name on something that would continue on even if/after we all leave.”

Shortly after that donation, in 2007, the Land Trust transferred the land to the village of Freeville, subject to a conservation easement by the Land Trust that permitted improvements to benefit public access but prevented the land from being developed in the future. The preserve was dedicated to Sherwood in July of that year.

For its first decade, the nature preserve had one trail, just about a mile long, that only went through a portion of the land’s 53-acre area. But in the 2010s, the village decided to put in a new trail.

“We had been talking for years about creating a second trail along the creek,” Freeville Mayor David Fogel said. “Back in ’13 or ’14, we began exploring the possibility. It was really heavily overgrown with all sorts of invasive bushes, pricker bushes and fallen trees. In 2015, thanks to the [village] listserv, we got a good crew of volunteers together and just sort of hacked through it.”

With help from about 10 volunteers and the Dryden Rotary Club, the village began what turned into a two-year-long project to create a new trail that ran much closer to Fall Creek than the first trail. Due to the nature of the land along the creek, the village also had to install about a dozen footbridges. The new trail opened just a few years ago in 2017.

The land’s long history is part of what makes the Genung Nature Preserve so unique. As Chris Olney, director of stewardship at the Finger Lakes Land Trust, explained, relative to other preserves the Land Trust oversees, Genung is actually rather small. But what it lacks in size it makes up for with character.

“Significant natural habitat right in a village is not always common,” Olney said. “Usually, many villages are built out, but Freeville has this beautiful chunk of land undeveloped, wooded, with great habitat and stream frontage, natural frontage along Fall Creek. And so, that became a wonderful gift to the community there thanks to [Millie’s] generosity.”

What also makes the preserve unique is the partnership it created between the village of Freeville and the Land Trust.

“We visit the property at least once a year, and everything they’ve done to install trails and bridges and a little parking area has just been great management on their part,” Olney said. “And we’ve had excellent communication and cooperation. So, it’s been a very good partnership between us and the village.”

While Sherwood is no longer alive, her living family shares an affinity with the land and what it’s become. Bridgeford-Smith said that Sherwood’s descendants supported her decision to donate the land, and they’re grateful to the village for maintaining it and helping it become a favorite among locals and nonlocals who’ve discovered it.

“It’s a way to also not only preserve the land for future generations to enjoy, but it’s a way to preserve the ecosystem so that fish, wildlife and birds can also have a preserve in a habitat,” Bridgeford-Smith said. “So, it’s a win-win.”

And Sherwood’s descendants aren’t the only ones grateful for the nature preserve. Tom Cavataio, the preserve’s volunteer steward and member of the Land Trust, said the Genung Nature Preserve is part of the character of the village, and residents are big fans.

“Knowing that there are a lot of other preserves that are much more popular and more visited, I personally think that the Genung Preserve is almost like best-kept secrets,” Cavataio said. “Even though it’s very accessible, … it’s probably one of the lesser-visited preserves that there are here, at least in the Finger Lakes area. So, I view it as something that’s a real opportunity for people locally, and not so local, to enjoy. And the additional trail system that was put in is something that enhances that and makes it something that is more attractive to more people.”

While the village of Freeville has some thoughts about eventually connecting the preserve to another park on Groton Avenue, that project is far off, if it happens at all, due to the high cost and economic fallout from COVID-19.

So, for the foreseeable future, the Genung Nature Preserve will remain as it stands today, with two trails that take walkers through a dense forest that stands in stark contrast to what the land once was. And for those interviewed for this story, that is more than enough.

“[I hope] that it will remain a preserve, for one thing, and that as many people as possible will choose to visit it,” Dickinson said. “It is just really a terrific piece of wild land on the edge of a village. And it seems like a little gem that we have here.”

Those interested in learning more about the preserve can read the Land Trust’s recent interview with Fogel in the latest edition of Afoot in the Field, available at fllt.org/afoot-in-the-field-vol-11-issue-2.