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Earth Day 2023: A photo walk through Saddler’s Woods in South Jersey

There is a sense of history walking through the old-growth forest. The land was untouched for centuries and was formally preserved on Earth Day 20 years ago.

Joe Norman, a birder from Sewell, crosses a small tributary of Newton’s Creek in Saddler’s Woods in Haddon Township. He was in the woods after an appointment nearby and stopped to look for migratory birds. His first sighting of the morning was a yellow-rumped warbler ("Setophaga coronata").
Joe Norman, a birder from Sewell, crosses a small tributary of Newton’s Creek in Saddler’s Woods in Haddon Township. He was in the woods after an appointment nearby and stopped to look for migratory birds. His first sighting of the morning was a yellow-rumped warbler ("Setophaga coronata").Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer

Saddler’s Woods in Haddon Township is an example of what the landscape in the region looked like long before William Penn plotted out his grid of streets in Philadelphia between the Schuylkill and Delaware Rivers. In Saddler’s Woods one tree thrived for nearly 300 years.

I feel a sense of walking in history, experiencing another time when I hike and photograph in the 25.8-acre, old-growth forest in South Jersey, squeezed in between four schools, a church, high-rise apartments, a water tower, municipal buildings, a shopping center, tennis club, and a county library.

On Earth Day 20 years ago, the woods were saved from developers and the town’s leaders (who wanted to level it for athletic fields).

A 2003 conservation easement preserves in perpetuity the land, which was purchased by the township.

The site was formally named Saddler’s Woods in 2004, in honor of Joshua Saddler, an enslaved man who escaped from the South, only to have his status contested in New Jersey. A Quaker farmer paid to ensure his freedom, which Saddler later repaid. Saddler prospered, purchased land, and built a home there.

In his will, Saddler left the woods to his heirs with instructions that “none of the timber shall be cut thereon”.

Naturalist educators Gina DiMaio (center) and Jeff Calhoun (not shown) with Saddler’s Woods Conservation Association lead a spring tour in the woods, stopping at Emancipation Beech. A 2020 storm uprooted and felled many trees, including the ancient (and beloved) 300-year-old American beech (“Fagus grandifolia”) named for Joshua Saddler.

A professional tree company cut the trunk and uprighted it where it remains today. DiMaio said children still love to step inside the tree’s hollow trunk.

Their next tour is Sunday, May 21. (Registration is required. Attendance limited to 20.)

A flier is posted in the woods for the May return of “Operation Goat Munch.” Launched last summer, the effort brought in 40 goats that ate their way through a large, fenced-off section where invasive plants like English Ivy, poison ivy, Japanese knotweed, and mugwort had completely smothered the native ground cover.