Dear friends, neighbors, and outdoors lovers,
Happy Holidays! I hope you all have had a wonderful 2025. The Mendon Foundation has enjoyed a spectacular year continuing to successfully manage numerous green spaces in our surrounding communities including our land trust properties and over 16-miles of the Lehigh Valley Trail.
Our six land trust properties are in better shape than ever. Hiking trails have been cleared and maintained throughout the year. Extensive water mitigation projects were completed at our Pittsford-Mendon Center Road and Taylor Road properties. We expect much dryer trail conditions next year. The Taylor Road walking bridge to the Irondequoit Creek trail was repositioned and stabilized. Sibleyville Nature Reserve grasslands continue to be managed with a rotational mowing of 1/3 of the property each Fall. A beautiful new woodland nature trail was established by a team of volunteers on our Eckler Road property that connects the Mendon Foundation trail system with a new Mendon Green subdivision trail system. We enjoyed observing a resident Great Horned Owl along this trail on numerous visits.
In June our local region experienced a massive rainstorm that caused flooding and extensive washout damage to multiple sections of the Lehigh Valley Trail. The Rochester Junction’s historic Freight House flooded as a result of the storm and required a team of volunteers to extensively clean the building. The Mendon Foundation and Monroe County work crews both spent a tremendous amount of effort to handle water mitigation along the Lehigh Valley Trail. The improvement was immediately noticeable as all standing water on the trail was removed. A small creek that has crossed over the trail between the towns of Mendon and Rush for multiple years was diverted under the trail via a culvert. These initiatives also included trail resurfacing throughout much of the section running through the town of Rush. The Lehigh Valley Trail bridges that enter into the Great Bend Park were repaired and/or completely redecked. The Mendon Foundation made a significant expenditure to design and install historical informational signage throughout the Rochester Junction. Of course, we also handled all the grass cutting and chainsawing of fallen trees on the Lehigh Valley Trail throughout the season. Our team continues managing the eight beautiful flower gardens at Rochester Junction and Mendon Station Park.
We continue to update our website with news and events, photographs, as well as resources such as trail maps of our land trust properties. Please take a look at our website and bookmark it. Also, please follow us on Facebook and Instagram.
Looking ahead, the Mendon Foundation has a robust vision and 5-year plan with specific goals. We are working to secure additional land to increase our land trust property footprint in the surrounding communities. We intend to continue our working relationship with Monroe County on the maintenance of the Lehigh Valley Trail which involves ongoing projects. We hope to double our active volunteer force. Volunteers allow us to continue providing excellent trail conditions on the Lehigh Valley trail and the trails on our land trust properties, as well as offer or support community programs such as our annual bird hikes, Mendon Beautification event, cycling events, perennial plant swap, Black Diamond Races, etc. Speaking of our Black Diamond Express Half Marathon and 5k races, 2025 was our fourteenth year running this event, and we had our second highest race participation.
As we enter the holiday giving season, I want to remind all of you that the Mendon Foundation is an IRS approved 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization, so your donations are 100% tax-deductible. We are completely dependent upon community support, as we receive no funds from the local towns or counties. I hope that you will consider making a financial donation to our fantastic cause so that we can give back to you and our surrounding communities.
You can donate in a variety of ways:
We are a 100% volunteer organization that completely depends on community members to donate their time for our organization to function. Please consider volunteering with our organization. Please contact me personally president@mendonfoundation.org or at (585) 497-1214 if you wish to join our volunteer team. We need volunteers for administrative, finance, bookkeeping, social media, legal services, and additions to our outdoor trail maintenance team! Everyone has something to offer, so please consider it.
Wishing a Happy Holiday season to you and yours. We hope to see you out on one of our trails.
Regards,
Brad Carlson
President, Mendon Foundation
Directors:
Fran Celona, Bonnie Coddington, John Farrell, Blaine Grindle, Diane Ham, Rodney Ham, Paige Jokl, Mike Torpey
