February 16, 2003                     Full Moon                                                                                                           

Western Pennsylvania Conservancy Turns 71 Today Western Pennsylvania Conservancy received its certificate of incorporation and charter on February 16, 1932. Conservationist and longtime WPC member Dr. M. Graham Netting provides background about the birth of WPC when it was called The Greater Pittsburgh Parks Association. As Dr. Netting notes, "This was hardly an auspicious time, it would seem in retrospect, to found a nonprofit organization that would be dependent upon gifts. Economic conditions were bleak in this third year of the Depression; unemployed workers had marched to Harrisburg; and 5,000 hunger marchers paraded in Pittsburgh." Dr. Netting referred to the original 10 founders as "Pittsburgh Patriots," adding that they were "sincerely devoted to the best interests, as they saw them, of the community." The above photo was taken on another February 28 years later, in 1960, during a real estate closing in Butler. On that occasion, WPC turned over 3,000 acres it had acquired in the Muddy Creek Valley to the Pennsylvania Department of Forests and Waters. The land would become the nucleus of what is known today as Moraine State Park. Pictured from left to right are Dr. Netting, then secretary of WPC; Mr. John C. Rex, chief, Division of Land Acquisition, Department of Forests and Waters; Mr. John M. Eisler, vice-president of WPC; and Dr. Charles F. Lewis, WPC president. Read the full text by Dr. Netting. Ways Western Pennsylvania Conservancy works to continue its vision set 71 years ago.  View WPC Daily for the month of January. Vote for your favorite WPC Daily in January.

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