⏲︎ This article is more than a year old.

The Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area, just south of Kleinfeltersville, is usually a springtime destination for many thanks to its massive geese gatherings — but it’s no less appealing in the fall.

All photos by Will Trostel.

Want proof? Just check out these pictures LebTown captured of the lake and surrounding trails on a cool October day.

The area is a major migratory stopover for several kinds of geese in the springtime, when their numbers can easily swell to over 100,000.

Middle Creek encompasses a whopping 6,254-acre parcel of land in both Lebanon and Lancaster Counties. It’s the creation of the Pennsylvania Game Commission, who began developing the area in the 1960s after it was selected as the best candidate for a new waterfowl management and hunting area. The biggest lake in the area is the result of a dam finished in late 1971.

The Visitors Center is a trove of information
The lake has a surface area of about 360 acres.

The Middle Creek Visitors Center offers information and exhibits on the area’s wildlife and ecosystem. Also closed for the fall and winter months is the north section of the Tour Road route that travels clockwise around the lake. However, the other public trails and areas, including the Willow Point pavilion, are still open.

The spillway at the southern end of the lake was first used in January of 1972.
Mill Stone Road forms the southern portion of the Tour Road route around the lake.
Parts of both Lebanon and Lancaster Counties make up the Middle Creek area, and Berks County lies just to the east.
Most of the land directly adjacent to the lake is off-limits to the public, but there are miles of public trails in the woods to check out.
In addition to the Tour Road closure, the lake is off-limits to boats from September to May.

Editor’s note: This article was reported during the COVID-19 pandemic. At that time, the visitors center was closed. However, we have updated the article to reflect that the visitors center is now open, so as to prevent confusion.

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Josh Groh is a Cornwall native and writer who began reporting for LebTown in 2019. He continued to regularly contribute to LebTown while earning a degree in environmental science at Lebanon Valley College, graduating in 2021. Since then, he has lead conservation crews in Colorado and taken on additional...

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