Summer is the time to explore the unique prairie ecosystem at the Jennings Environmental Education Center!

A guided 90-minute walk discussing the plants, animals, history and geology of the prairie will be offered at 2:00 p.m. on Sunday, August 7.  Free; No registration required. **The walk will begin in the prairie parking area.  The prairie is hot and has little shade, please dress appropriately.

The small prairie at the Jennings Center is one of the few remaining pockets of a once greater extension of the true Midwestern prairie.  A combination of the glacial history of the area and climatic changes that took place over the last million years allowed the Midwestern prairie plant community to extend into Pennsylvania about 2000 BC.   

The Jennings area was established in the late 1950’s to protect and conserve a beautiful prairie flower, the blazing star.  It was the first reserve established in Pennsylvania to protect an individual plant species and remains the only public and protected prairie in the Commonwealth.  The hot midsummer weather will bring the spectacular blazing star and other prairie flowers to peak bloom during late July and early August.