Saturday Adventures: The Ghosts of Welwyn Preserve

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Indy Anna Bones is an adventurer, explorer, street art expert, cryptozoologist, and ambassador to millipedes.

She had come to Welwyn Preserve in Glenn Cove, NY.

Now the site of the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County, Welwyn was once the estate of Harold Irving Pratt, a rich oil man who died in 1939.

The Ghosts of Welwyn Preserve

Glen Cove, NY

The museum was closed that day, but Indy Anna was free to wander the grounds and explore the paths in the forest.

Except for the mansion, the estate has been left to rot since 1969, and Nassau County has no plans to develop the area.

All around she could hear ghosts climbing stone steps between the gardens as she descended into the woods.

The grounds are open to hikers, but dogs are not allowed at Welwyn to protect the wildlife.

All around was evidence that Welwyn Preserve still lived.

Empty houses still house parties when the sun goes down.

Indy Anna poked her head inside the decayed structures.

Everything was covered in graffiti.

Welwyn was once a Gold Coast Mansion, built during the Gilded Age of the North Shore.

The fabulous wealth of the region was popularized by F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby."

The mansion was restored in 1993 by Holocaust survivor, Boris Chartan.

Nature reclaimed the rest.

Deep in the forest, Indy Anna found the remains of a greenhouse.

The pipes and channels looked like they could still carry water.

Vines twisted around everything.

There was even more graffiti here.

Indy Anna could grow a lot in a greenouse like this.

She continued on through the forest.

A trail spit her out onto a mud flat, a protected nesting ground for birds!

She did not want to disturb the piping plover, a threatened shorebird the size of the sparrow.

In the distance, an Osprey watched her from a tree.

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