The First Game Warden School in America

Somewhere on these state game lands sits a piece of conservation history most people drive past without knowing. In nineteen thirty-two, Pennsylvania established what the state calls the first academy in the nation dedicated entirely to training game protectors, the officers who would eventually be called Wildlife Conservation Officers. Before this school existed, game law enforcement was largely self-taught and inconsistent.

The academy professionalized the work, setting a model that other states would eventually follow. It was later named for Ross Leffler, who served on the Pennsylvania Game Commission for many years and went on to a senior federal post at the Interior Department. A game warden school in the Pennsylvania forest named for a man who rose to one of the nation's top conservation posts, and it all started here first.