Hawk Mountain Sanctuary
Albany Township, Berks County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Founded in 1934 by Rosalie Edge, it is the world's first refuge for birds of prey. It had been a popular shooting site because of its location on a major hawk migration corridor and a 1929 bounty placed on northern goshawks. Through the work of its founder and early supporters, such as Richard Pough, it became a raptor conservation research, education, and training facility and a hawk-watching destination for bird and nature lovers globally.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
The ridge at Hawk Mountain sits astride a major migration corridor, and for years hunters gathered there to shoot passing raptors by the thousands—a slaughter encouraged by a 1929 bounty on goshawks. In 1934 conservationist Rosalie Edge bought the land and turned the killing ground into the world's first refuge for birds of prey. With early supporters like Richard Pough, she transformed it into a center for raptor research, education, and hawk-watching that draws nature lovers from around the globe.
Why it matters
Hawk Mountain marked a turning point in American conservation, showing that even predators deserved protection, and it became a birthplace of the modern movement to save wildlife once dismissed as vermin.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By the early twentieth century, Americans had grown used to the idea that some animals were simply enemies to be destroyed. Wolves, coyotes, and birds of prey were widely branded as vermin—killers of livestock and game—and bounties were often paid to anyone who shot them. Conservation, where it existed, tended to protect the creatures people liked to hunt or watch, not the predators at the top of the chain.
The ridge here in the hills of Berks County sits along a major migration corridor, one of those geographic funnels where thousands of hawks and other raptors stream past each autumn, riding the winds along the mountains. That natural bounty made it a magnet—first for the birds, and then for the gunners who came to shoot them as they passed.
The killing intensified after a 1929 bounty was placed on northern goshawks, turning the ridge into a notorious shooting ground. Against that backdrop, in the depths of the Great Depression, the idea of buying land simply to stop the slaughter of predators was radical, almost eccentric. It ran against decades of habit.
People & events
The turning point came in 1934, when the conservationist Rosalie Edge stepped in. Where others saw a shooting site, she saw a refuge waiting to be born, and she acted to end the killing on the ridge—founding what became the world's first sanctuary dedicated to birds of prey.
Edge was not working alone. Early supporters helped transform a bold gesture into a lasting institution, among them Richard Pough, whose involvement is remembered on the marker alongside hers. Together they turned a place defined by dead hawks into one defined by living ones.
What they built did not stop at protection. The sanctuary grew into a center for research on raptors, for education, and for training—a place where people came not to shoot the migrating birds but to study, count, and understand them. The gunners' ridge became a watch site, and the annual migration that had once drawn hunters began drawing observers instead.
Its place in the American story
Hawk Mountain marks a genuine hinge in the American conservation story. It was the first refuge in the world created specifically for birds of prey—a public declaration that even predators, the animals people had been paid to kill, were worth saving.
That idea would ripple outward for the rest of the century. The notion that a healthy landscape needs its hawks and eagles, not just its songbirds and game, became a cornerstone of modern ecology. Long-term counts of migrating raptors from ridges like this one later helped scientists detect the damage that pesticides were doing to birds at the top of the food chain.
So the sanctuary is more than a pretty overlook. It stands near the headwaters of the modern movement to protect wildlife once dismissed as worthless or harmful—a shift in how a whole nation decided which lives were worth defending.
If you visit
Come in autumn if you can. The whole reason this place exists is the river of birds that pours along the ridge on the right winds, and standing where gunners once waited—now with binoculars instead of shotguns—is the closest you can get to feeling the story in your own chest.
Look out along the mountain line and imagine the sheer numbers that once made this a killing ground, and then remember that what you're watching pass overhead is exactly what one determined founder set out to save. The counting of these birds is part of the site's living work, not just its history.
Dress for wind and bring patience; raptor-watching rewards those who wait. For a road trip through American conservation history, this ridge belongs on the itinerary as a beginning—the spot where protecting a predator stopped being unthinkable.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Rosalie Edge
- · Richard Pough
Related events
- · Founding of Hawk Mountain Sanctuary (1934)
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