To eliminate public confusion over the name of one of its 20 state forest districts, the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources this week announced it has rename the Valley Forge State Forest District in honor of William Penn, the founder of the state and an early conservationist.

Effective immediately, the district – which encompasses eight counties and a section of one other in the southeastern section of the state – has become the William Penn State Forest District.

“This forest district often has been confused with Valley Forge National Historical Park,” said Department of Conservation and Natural Resources Secretary Michael DiBerardinis. “The name change should help eliminate this confusion while honoring our state’s founding father and one of its first conservationists.”

The district included Berks, Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Lancaster, Lehigh, Montgomery and Philadelphia counties, as well a section of Northampton County. It is representative of the geographic areas influenced by William Penn. Its woodlands were governed by Penn’s 1681 edict to colonists that, “in clearing ground, care be taken to leave one acre of trees for every five acres cleared ...”

The state forest district had been formerly headquartered at what had been a state park at Valley Forge until 1976, when the facility became a federal park. William Penn State Forest district now is based at French Creek State Park, near Elversen, Chester County.

It contains five separate state forest tracts totaling 901 acres: Goat Hill Serpentine Barrens Public Wild Plant Sanctuary, 602 acres in the southwest corner of Chester County; Little Tinicum Island, about 200 acres, in the Delaware River estuary, Delaware County; the David R. Johnson Natural Area, about 56 acres, in Bucks County; the Ruth Zimmerman Natural Area, about 33 acres in Berks County and the Cornwall Tower site, 10 acres, in Lancaster County.

For more information, visit DCNR’s State Forest webpage.

7/27/2007