Tifft Nature Perserve (Buffalo, New York)

 park, nature conservation park / area

Tifft Nature Preserve is a 264-acre nature refuge dedicated to conservation and environmental education. Becoming a department of the Buffalo Museum of Science in 1982, the preserve has five miles of nature trails and three boardwalks with viewing blinds in and adjacent to its central cattail marsh which permit visitors to observe local wildlife in their natural habitats.

Once part of a huge dairy farm owned by George Washington Tifft, in the mid-1800's the land was sold to the Lehigh Valley Railroad in the which dug out a series of deepwater canals and basins which permitted lake freighters access to the site through the City Ship Canal. The site quickly became a major transshipment center primarily for coal and iron ore, however by the late 1950’s the operations began to wind down and sections of the basin were steadily closed off and dewatered. With the land returned to the City of Buffalo, several of the empty basins were subsequently used as a landfill for municipal trash through the 1960's before all dumping ceased in the late 1960's following public pressure on the City to preserve the waterfront land. By 1972 the former dump had been completely encased in a thick clay liner and covered in several feet of topfill soil, permitting the site to be greenscaped by the addition and enlargement of ponds, the planting of trees and wildflowers and the preservation and expand the remnants of Tifft’s large cattail marsh. After four years of construction, the preserve opened to the public in 1976.

www.tifft.org/tifft/