Milford Experimental Forest
MEF is a 1,400-acre research located at the intersection of the Pocono Plateau of Pennsylvania and the Delaware Highlands of New York and New Jersey, which provide the closest wildland landscape to New York City.
MEF, while owned by the Pinchot Family, is a joint project of the US Forest Service at Grey Towers, the Pinchot Institute for Conservation, the Grey Towers Heritage Association, and the Pinchot family.
Welcome to The Milford Experimental Forest (MEF)!
Our History
In 1901, while Gifford Pinchot was building the United States Forest Service, he and his father, James Pinchot established the Milford Experimental Forest to study methods to regenerate new forests in the aftermath of the widespread deforestation of the 1800’s. Research focused on the silvics (life history and ecology) and regeneration of different tree species as well as establishing red and white pine plantations. Additionally, for twenty-five years, MEF served as a summer field training program for Yale School of Forestry students. Many of our nation’s first natural resource leaders, including Aldo Leopold, gained their practical forestry skills—silviculture, surveying, dendrology—here at the Milford Experimental Forest.
Both MEF and the Yale Summer Camp training facility were abandoned in the late 1920s. Seventy years later, the Pinchot family, in partnership with the USFS and the Pinchot Institute, reestablished MEF to continue the tradition of long-term studies in forest ecology and sustainable forest management.
The Camp is currently not open to the general public for access.