Original Document

Honey Hollow Watershed:



Created in 1939, the Honey Hollow Watershed Conservation Area was the first small upland watershed in agricultural used to demonstrate that soil, water and wildlife conservation, and flood prevention could be achieved through cooperative local action. The Honey Hollow Watershed consists of five farms totaling about 650 acres and is located along the Delaware River, north of New Hope, Pennsylvania.



The Honey Hollow Watershed was established in the 1930s, when the owners of the farms along Honey Creek observed how their fields were washing away. During the Colonial times, farming was a way of life in the watershed. The introduction of mechanical farming tools increased production but created the new problem of soil erosion. By the 1920s local farmers" fields began to show tremendous erosion. Cultivation by machinery had caused serious sheet and gully erosion on the upland farms, while situation struck those on the down slope. It was obvious that the erosion must be stopped, or else the land would be ruined for agricultural use. The five owners of the farmland in the Honey Hollow watershed combined efforts and took their concerns to the regional office of the Soil Conservation Service in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania. The Regional Director, Dr. J. P. Jones, agreed to provide the technical assistance needed and the landowners agreed to band together and carry out the soil and water conservation practices prescribed for each tract. Within the next two years terraces, strip cropping, and diversion ditches had been constructed to control runoff on steep slopes, long dense hedges had been planted to check erosion and provide water life habitat, and several ponds were built and stocked with fish.



Almost overnight the "Honey Hollow Project" attracted attention from high levels in the Department of Agriculture, as well as farmers seeking ways to improve their land. Vice President Henry Wallace visited the Honey Hollow in 1944, and returned several times. Louis Broomfield, novelist and conservationist, was also a good friend of the project. The Watershed still retains all the conservation measures adopted in the late 1930s, terraces, contour-plowed fields, diversion ditches, wildlife hedges, ponds, and tree-lands. The project attracted national attention and became a model of cooperative farmers' action to conserve natural resources.



The Bucks County Audubon Society provided this information