In mid-2025, IMPACT asked Zach Owen and Tim Demster—instructors of shop and environmental technology at Andover Central High School—if they would be interested in engaging their students in the construction of an Adirondack style lean-to shelter overlooking the beaver pond on Trail 4 in Phillips Creek State Forest.

The answer was an immediate yes.

So, during the fall and winter of 2025/2026 HOW MANY shop students cut logs to the sizes required by the shelter design and tested the assemblage of the shelter in the shop itself.

When spring arrived, the students and their instructors dismantled the structure and prepared for moving the logs to the building site.

The Allegany County Foresters of the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation prepared the construction site, which overlooks a beaver pond.

On on May 26 and 26, Andover students and their instructors moved the logs to the site and erected the shelter once again, as they had learned to do in their shop classes.

Financial and in-kind contributors to this $5,000 project included the following:

• Allegany Area Community Foundation

• Eddy Lumber

• Facett Lane Lumber

• IMPACT