Please be prepared to wear a face mask while visiting Silver Lake Bog, particularly when passing other visitors on the boardwalk.
With a 200-foot bluff overlooking Silver Lake, the Silver Lake Bog Preserve provides spectacular views. The 98-acre preserve contains a wide variety of habitats, including a black spruce-tamarack bog, northern white cedar swamp, a hemlock-northern hardwood forest, and a pine ridge.
The half-mile boardwalk provides access for people of all ages and abilities to get a closer look at the diversity of plants, such as sphagnum moss, evergreen leaves, pitcher plans, ferns, and wildflowers, that make up the understory of forest floor beneath the cedars, black spruce and tamaracks.
As you walk along the boardwalk or up the trail to the bluffs, you will observe distinct changes in the vegetation as the elevation and the soil moisture increase or decrease. When the trail ascends into a northern hardwood forest, look for a variety of mosses, liverworts and saxifrages surrounding the nearby stream. After a 200 feet climb in elevation to the bluff you will be reward with a stunning view of Silver Lake and Whiteface.
Why We Work Here
This site gives the Conservancy an opportunity to learn about and protect diverse natural communities within a small area. The different vegetation types that grow on the preserve provide a variety of habitats for many bird, mammal, and amphibian species.
Silver Lake Bog is a representative of an Adirondack Bog that formed in a depression and filled with water because of poor drainage. Plants and animals that adapt to living in bogs can tolerate very moist and acidic conditions. The bog is surrounded by a northern hardwood forest of beech, maple, yellow birch and hemlock and leads to a bluff overlooking Silver Lake. Keep your eyes and ears out for the many birds inhabit this area such as black-backed woodpecker, olive-sided flycatcher and many warblers.
What We Do
The Conservancy maintains this preserve for educational and scientific purposes.