The Lime Hollow Center for Environment and Culture is a nature preserve project in Cortland County, New York. It was founded in 1993 as the Lime Hollow Nature Center, the culmination of efforts 20 years earlier to develop a nature preserve to protect an unusual assemblage of marl ponds, a peat bog, and kame-and-kettle topography along an abandoned railroad right of way in Lime Hollow, just west of the city of Cortland.HistoryLime Hollow, through a renewable use agreement, began by utilizing 100acre of land and two buildings belonging to the Tunison Laboratory of Aquatic Science of the US Geological Survey. Lime Hollow purchased an additional 190acre adjoining the Tunison property in 1998, partly funded with a grant from the New York State Clean Air/Clean Water Bond Act. The area included a 4acre pond, beaver pond, old fields, and woodlands.During 2002, the name of the center was changed to Lime Hollow Center for Environment and Culture. A new logo was created to better express the mission of the center, including an emphasis on providing cultural education programs in addition to environmental education programs. Lime Hollow opened a $1 million Visitor Center facility located on McLean Road in May 2007. The Visitor Center has a central exhibit space, a bird education room, several modular educational displays, gift-shop, staff offices, and numerous green building features. Outside, the center features a creek-side bird sanctuary - and, a key new addition to the center - a "Trail For All" designed to give people with disabilities easy access to one of the center's groomed trails.
