Brown Family Environmental Center

Sciences

Kenyon’s 610-acre nature preserve serves as a living laboratory.

A river runs through it

Kenyon’s nature preserve offers beautiful gardens plus 610 acres of woodland and prairie habitats, which you can explore on eight miles of hiking trails, some offering fine hilltop views. A river does in fact run through it: the Kokosing, one of Ohio’s scenic rivers, where students have been known to undertake monumentally lazy tubing expeditions. The preserve is used for biological research, but also for campfires, birdwatching, nature photography, and all-purpose communing, meandering and philosophizing. Students do volunteer work here as well, helping with the gardens and leading environmental education programs for local schoolchildren.

Explore related tour stops.

Return to the beginning of the tour.

  • Kokosing Gap Trail

    Recreation

    This 14-mile trail hugs the bank of the Kokosing River as it winds through forests and farmland.

  • Franklin Miller Observatory

    Sciences

    Perched on a hill a few minutes’ walk from campus, the observatory lets astronomy students — and, actually, everyone — get up close and personal with the cosmos.

  • Science Quad

    Sciences

    Each building here is connected to promote interdisciplinary research and community-building.