04/20/2025
How Hawk Mountain came to be.
The Woman Who Bought a Mountain to Save the Hawks
The Bloody Mountain
Pennsylvania, 1934. Rosalie Edge, a 56-year-old New York socialite, stood on a ridge littered with bullet casings and hawk carcasses. For decades, hunters had treated Kittatinny Ridge as a shooting gallery, blasting 20,000 migrating raptors annually for sport. They called it "hawk shooting"—she called it murder.
The Ultimate Power Move
With zero conservation experience but a checkbook and fury, Edge:
Bought the mountain for 3,500(about80k today)
Hired a one-armed warden (former trapper Maurice Broun)
Posted signs: "NO HAWK SHOOTING ALLOWED"
Then came the hunters—armed, angry, and used to doing what they wanted.
The Standoff
Broun patrolled alone, facing:
✔ Death threats ("We’ll shoot you like the birds")
✔ Sabotaged trails (b***y traps with barbed wire)
✔ Winter temperatures (no heat in the lookout cabin)
His weapon? A notebook—meticulously counting every surviving hawk.
Why This Changed Everything
By 1938:
Shootings dropped 90%
Scientists realized hawks weren’t pests but critical to ecosystems
Edge’s "radical" idea birthed modern raptor science
Today, Hawk Mountain:
Tracks 20+ species across continents
Trains global conservationists
Proves one stubborn person can rewrite ecology
"Not a sanctuary—a war zone turned classroom."
"The Audubon Society called her ‘unladylike.’ The hawks called her savior."
"Before Greta, there was Rosalie—and her mountain."
📍 Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, PA | Founded 1934
Next time you see a red-tail soar, thank the chain-smoking socialite who stared down rifles to save them. Because sometimes, the fiercest thing in nature isn’t the predator—it’s the protector.