Grounds Highlights

Just south of the L.S. Peery Education Building is Arrowhead Pond. Visitors can often spot non-native turtles basking in the sun upon logs here. Ducks and Canada Geese call this pond home and often raise their young on the nesting platforms above the water. A bird blind at the north-east end of the pond allows visitors to view the pond and its inhabitants without disturbing the wildlife. In 2023, TreeUtah and Ogden Rotary Club teamed up with Ogden Nature Center to revegetate the banks of the pond to provide more native habitat for wildlife.

Head north of the Visitor Center along the Habitat Trail, and you’ll find Teal Pond, a unique wetland with two islands, multiple nesting platforms, a beaver lodge, and a two-storied bird blind that allows visitors to get a sneak peek of birds and other animals without being spotted themselves. Be very still upon approach and you just might see impressive species such as the American White Pelican, the Black-crowned Night Heron, muskrats, beaver, amphibians, and reptiles basking on logs. Look for tracks and scat left by deer, raccoons, Red Fox, pheasants and quail.

Take the Blackbird Trail and curve around to the west to find Blackbird Pond. The trail splits this gorgeous pond habitat into two sections and is a great spot to view songbirds, Wood Ducks, deer, Red Fox, beaver, and more! Just north of the pond, there is a shaded picnic table where you can relax and watch wildlife. A beautiful view of Ben Lomond can be seen from the north end of Blackbird Pond.

Located north of the Eccles Observation Tower, Killdeer Pond is our newest wetland at the preserve. This wetland was created in collaboration with Ogden City to serve as an overflow basin for Millcreek, helping to reduce flooding for downstream water users, while providing water and habitat on the grounds of the Ogden Nature Center. We do continuous restoration work at Killdeer Pond to mimic the functions of a natural wetland which supports a variety of wildlife  including Killdeer, Spotted Sandpipers, American White Pelicans, Great Blue Herons, Belted Kingfishers, and more! Active native plant restoration is conducted along the pond's berm and shorelines to provide habitat for resident wildlife.

 

The Potholes are a series of small wetlands that are encountered as you continue on the Potholes Trail to Picnic Grove. These wetlands host beautiful native vegetation including Hardstem Bulrush, Narrowleaf Cattails, willows, and cottonwood trees. Surrounding the potholes are wet meadows and grasslands that support a variety of native flowers that pollinators and birds can’t resist! During the summer, many Monarch Butterflies may be found in the area. On the south side of the trial you can find one of our Utah Department of Agricultural funded Native Pollinator Habitats.

 

A secretive pond on the west of the preserve without trail access. This pond serves as a sanctuary for animals to escape any human interference. Dominated by native cattails and bulrushes, Dragonfly Pond is a peaceful yet complex wetland system that supports a large population of Red-winged Blackbirds, frogs, muskrats, secretive marsh birds like the Sora, and you guessed it, dragonflies!

 

If you look to the east from the top of the Eccles Observation Tower, near Killdeer Pond, you will see the remnants of Avocet Pond. The Observation Tower was originally built to allow visitors to view this secret wetland, but recurring drought has changed the hydrological function of Avocet Pond, leaving it without water for most of the year. We monitor this pond for changes to better understand how to restore it for native wildlife.

To the east of the Amphitheater and Plain City Canal, you can find Tadpole Pond, complete with picnic tables and a small pavilion. This pond has seen changes over recent years, mostly due to drought. Decreased precipitation and a lowering water table means this pond doesn’t hold water for the majority of the year. This has allowed wet-loving vegetation, such as willows, to creep in and take over the pond area. While we work to restore the hydrology and water levels of the pond, we can still find valuable uses for the area. We routinely use the willows for restoration practices such as constructing beaver dam analogs (man-made beaver dams) and planting new stands of willows elsewhere on the preserve.

(google maps coordinates: 41.252693, -112.005451)

This newly created marsh is courtesy of Ogden Nature Center’s resident beavers. Beavers are incredible ecosystem engineers and can transform an entire habitat without funding, equipment, and volunteers! This field was once a dry, weed infested area, offering little habitat value to wildlife. With the help of beavers, it has been transformed into a productive marsh system with cattails, bulrushes, cottonwoods, and riparian wildflowers. A variety of wildlife can be observed enjoying the new marsh including White-faced Ibis, Great Blue Herons, Red-winged Blackbirds, waterfowl, deer, muskrat, birds of prey, Red Fox, and so much more!

 

The Plain City Canal runs south to north along the eastern border of the preserve where it eventually feeds into Millcreek on the northern end of the preserve. The Plain City Canal was historically used to move water from the Ogden River to downstream users but was decommissioned years ago. Now, the canal's sole purpose is to supply water to riparian and forested habitats here at Ogden Nature Center, where it is allowed to behave like a natural stream. The stream is a vital life-source and provides excellent habitat for almost all wildlife species. We conduct active restoration along the canal including removing invasive species and installing of beaver dam analogs (man-made beaver dams) as well as wildlife monitoring using wildlife cameras and acoustic detectors.

 

Millcreek runs east to west on the northern end of the preserve.  This waterway is a vital riparian area at Ogden Nature Center. It also flows alongside Dumke Picnic Grove, offering a relaxing break from the summer heat and a beautiful forested area to explore. Millcreek is a historical stream that diverges from Ogden River near the mouth of Ogden Canyon but has been transformed into an irrigation conveyance canal outside of the Ogden Nature Center. Within the boundaries of the Ogden Nature Center, the stream is allowed to take its natural form, including its historical oxbow formation which aids floodplain reconnection. The vegetation along Millcreek is dominated by willows, cattails, milkweed, and more, making it an extremely important habitat for beavers, deer, water birds, songbirds, and nesting waterfowl.