Pre Euro-Settlement Vegetation of the Between The Miamis Survey in Southwestern Ohio

 It took a couple years, but I've completed the digitizing of the section line comments from the Public Land Surveys for the Between the Miamis.  These were then used to create a plant community cover map.  The interactive online map is published at ArcGIS Online here:https://www.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?webmap=18284ed2d6b04ddcad52e40a6d658aa0.   If you click on a section line it shows the surveyor description of the vegetation for that mile.  If you click on a colored polygon it displays the vegetation cover type.  An explanation of the cover types can be found here:

https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=18284ed2d6b04ddcad52e40a6d658aa0

The Mills of Hebble Creek

I grew up in a new plat suburban home in Fairborn on the edge of the countryside.  I guess the love of nature and solo wandering was born into me, and I spent a lot of time in the woods and fields exploring, sometimes pretty far afield.  I was intrigued by the small stream that flowed near our house, Hebble Creek, and loved to follow it.  

A few years ago when I was doing my research on Huffman Prairie I became intrigued with the creek again, as it is the main stream that drains the area around the prairie, and researching its history.  Pulling historical threads is fascinating, and as I looked into it (with the help of the Greene County Archives) I slowly filled in a story of early pioneers and their efforts to harness the power of the stream for grist and sawmills.  Millwrights and millers were amazingly creative and industrious, moving water from the creek to their mill sites, sometimes by changing the course of a stream.  Three mills were built along Hebble Creek between 1815 and 1822, small industries that were vitally important for many years but are now forgotten.  

In 2020 I submitted an article about these mills, their history, and their environmental impact to the Ohio History Journal, including original art depicting the mills created by local artist Ann Geise.  The article appeared in the Spring, 2021 edition of Ohio History, with one of Ann's illustrations on the cover.  I am putting it here in hopes that it will be available to more local people who might be interested in this topic.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/erac2aewkrutm5e/Three%20Early%20Water-Powered%20Mills%20in%20Northwest%20Greene%20County%2C%20Ohio%20and%20their%20Impacts%20on%20the%20Landscape.pdf?dl=0

Pre-Settlement Vegetation of the Dayton, Ohio Region

 I've been researching the old Public Land Surveys again, in more detail.  The information comes from books and microfiche stored at the Ohio History Center in Columbus.  I photographed the books and microfiche files and brought it home.  These records have three main pools of information:

The plat maps of the townships, which show outlines of prairies, wetlands, and some unique features such as Indian mounds.  These were digitized into a GIS polygon geodatabase.

The species, diameter, and location of "witness trees" that were blazed by the surveyors at the corners of each square mile.  These were digitized into a GIS point geodatabase.

The comments made by the surveyor summarizing the nature of each mile traversed.  These were digitized into a GIS line database.

Once the database is complete it is possible to interpolate the data points/lines/polygons, with a little help from topographic and soil shapefiles.  This map is the results of analysis of 24 PLS townships located between the Great Miami and Little Miami Rivers, between Dayton and Yellow Springs, Ohio.

This region contained oak-hickory forests, prairies, wet prairies, fens, oak barrens/savanna, open oak woodlands, oak woodlands overgrown with hazelnut shrubs, and hazel-oak thickets (prairies overgrown with hazelnut shrubs).  Nearly all of it was composed of plant communities that had been modified or created by fire.  

Native Americans had been using fire to manage the land for wildlife habitat, natural food production (such as hazelnuts and wild plum), easy travel, and quiet hunting, but burning the grasslands and forest understories continuously for much of the last 5,000 years.  It's a world that was present far longer than the current white European culture that has predominated since 1800, but it has been mostly obliterated and forgotten.  All that's left are some degraded scraps, but even these are beautiful and diverse.  We lost so much before we even knew what we had.  A culture that had learned to cultivate and manage natural systems to the benefit of many life forms was replaced by one that only benefitted humans.  

By the time the land surveys were completed in the early 1800's the land had already begun to change.  Many prairies and open oak woodlands were thick with brush from lack of fire, and bison and elk were nearly or completely gone.  Some fire was still happening.  As late as 1802 surveyor Israel Ludlow, while traversing a barren (oak savanna) in what is now Beavercreek Township recorded in his notes "In March, 1803, “much dead timber, fire burning the woods”.

To access an interactive map of this research click this link:

https://www.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?webmap=a2e1c2d6b855485d9b082671d1cda8c7

Here you can read the actual surveyor comments for each section line.

Pearl's Fen Update

boardwalk under construction 10-11-19

Work is proceeding on a new trail system and boardwalk at Pearl's Fen.  A contractor, hired by Greene County Parks & Trails is installing the boardwalk at this writing.  GCPT has installed a new hiking trail loop too and the contractor has installed two bridges over "Pearl's Run", the stream that begins in the fen at a large spring.  Eventually this trail could be extended to connect with the trail system of the adjacent Oakes Quarry Park.

bridge 1 completed

This project is funded with a Clean Ohio Green Space Conservation grant that the Park District received a few years ago.  The second phase of the project will be the removal of a large portion of the woody vegetation that has encroached on the fen, which used to be open.  This growth has been at the expense of the diversity of herbaceous plants that lives there.  It is hoped that this "haircut" will allow these rare plants to come back.

bridge 2 completed

My friend Dr. Jim Amon did some research at the site some twenty years ago.  He and his student documented that the fen is getting drier, apparently because the stream is cutting down and lowering the water table.  It may be necessary to follow their suggestion and install some small check dams on the creek to help raise the local water table back up.

Another piece of good news, GCPT is in the process of purchasing another house tract on Byron Rd. to improve the visibility and entrance to the site.  Also, a 7.5-acre parcel on the north side of the fen property is also being acquired and restored, with the help of a Clean Ohio grant.  This tract was going to be developed into houses but a conservation team including GCPT, BW Greenway Community Land Trust, and Beaver Creek Wetlands Association worked with the developer to set this buffer aside.

Huffman Prairie: A Little History

On Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Greene County Ohio is Ohio's largest remnant tallgrass prairie.  The site is 112 acres and an Ohio Natural Landmark.

My familiarity with the prairie prairie remnant adjacent to started in 1984.  I had been looking at and compiling old surveyor records of northwest Greene County, and those records showed significant stretches of prairies and wetlands in the region.  Here is a map from the project that was published in the Ohio Journal of Science back then.

You can download the study here: https://kb.osu.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/1811/23075/V085N3_125.pdf

The big blob on the left side of the map was, in 1802, a large open tallgrass prairie on the east grading  to a large alkaline fen/sedge meadow further west.  

Back in the early 1980's I caught "prairie fever" and started learning all I could about the prairies that once existed in Greene County and Ohio.  I started driving my rusty Nova around and looking around the areas where the first land surveyors documented prairies in 1802 to see if there were any remnants of these old prairies and wetlands.  To my surprise there were quite a few, some of them in great shape.  The biggest one used to be on what is now Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.  Back then you couldn't just drive your car out there, it was on a secure military installation.  Fortunately, my dad worked on the base and had a car with a sticker, and he agreed to haul me around and look for prairie plants on a nice September day.  We didn't see much of anything until we turned onto Pylon Rd., and after several hundred yards there was big clump of big bluestem grass in the ditch on the left side.  I felt like I had found King Tut's tomb!  Dad was not so impressed.  He directed my attention to the right side of the road and asked "what about all that over there"?  There, stretching over a large field was field with big swatches of bluestem and indian grass swaying in the breeze.  Fortunately, I was too young for a heart attack, but it was a thrill.  It was then we noticed a big yellow tractor with a mower going through the field mowing the prairie down. 

When he passed near us I sheepishly flagged the fellow down.  He got out of the tractor and dad and I did our best to explain why these weeds should be left standing.  He let me take his picture.   He contacted his boss, who came out to see who these crazies were.  Here is a picture of dad with the poor fellow, who was pretty laid back about the whole thing.

We got some names of who to contact at the Base about the "discovery" and started pestering them to recognize and protect the prairie.  I was put in contact with a young woman named Terri Lucas who was the Base's Natural Resources Manager.  Terry was quite intrigued and interested.  She even applied to have the prairie designated as a State Natural Landmark through the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.  Her efforts paid off and Landmark status was formally awarded in 1986.  It didn't give a legal protection to the site, but it did identify it as important and showed Wright-Patt's commitment to protecting and managing it.

A birder/photographer friend of mine, Mark Dillon, took an interest in the site.  Mark discovered that the big prairie was also a haven for rare nesting grassland birds like bobolinks and Henslow sparrows. He took some beautiful pictures documenting them.  Paul Knoop wrote an article in his newspaper column about the Prairie, which helped raise awareness of the site.

Wright-Patterson officials took the remarkable step of actually surveying the prairie and documenting it on their facility maps.  When this was accomplished 108 acres was set aside to manage for prairie management and restoration.  

Something that is kind of confusing about Huffman Prairie is that there are two of them.  The "natural" site is the Huffman Prairie State Natural Landmarka, established in 1986.

 The one that most people visit is the Huffman Prairie Flying Field, a component of the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park.  The two are adjacent to one another and share a similar natural and human history.

Orville and Wilbur Wright at Huffman Prairie (Flying Field) in 1904

They both were once part of the 3 square-mile prairie/fen complex that filled that part of the Mad River Valley.  In 1896 they were both owned by Dayton banker Torrence Huffman.  In 1904 an 84-acre portion of Mr. Huffman's land was being used to pasture livestock.  Mr. Huffman granted Orville and Wilbur Wright permission to use the pasture for a flying field, so long as they didn't let the animals out.

The Huffman Prairie Flying Field is a component of the Dayton Aviation History National Historical Park which was established in 2004.  It is where the Wright Brother learned to turn, control, and effectively pilot the worlds first airplanes.  It is well marked with National Park interpretive signs along a maintained path that effectively  explains the important events that happened on this old prairie.

 A reproduction of the Wrights 1904 storage hanger and launch on the Flying Field and adjacent to the Natural Landmark.

Huffman Prairie Conservation Area is marked by several interpretive signs, a kiosk, and a brochure.

Restored prairie wildflowers with the restored 1904 hanger in the background


The land that is now the Flying Field and a large portion of the lowest land on WPAFB used to be an alkaline bog, or fen.  It has now been drained and the original vegetation mostly destroyed.  Back in 1904 the Wright Brothers had to deal with a very hummocky terrain, likely from the remains of the big sedge clumps that lived in the wetland.  Similar "sedge meadows" can still be found in the Beaver Creek Wetlands, but this one has been lost.

Hummocky terrain on the Wright's Flying Field in 1904.  These clumps were likely the remains of the hummock sedge, or Carex stricta.

Living Carex stricta sedge meadow in Beaver Creek Wetlands

The Huffman Prairie State Natural Lanmark has been a restoration project for over 30 years.  Organizations including WPAFB, Fiver Rivers MetroParks, The Nature Conservancy, and US Fish and Wildlife Service have done much to restore the site, which had been damaged by years of agricultural and military use.

Controlled burn bu WPAFB and US Fish and Wildlife personnel in 2016

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The Herbarium of John Van Cleve Part II

Back in January, 2014 I made a post about the John Van Cleve Herbarium in the Boonshoft Museum of Discovery.   Since that time I have photographed the specimens and made a book of it so that anyone can see it.  I hope it will preserve a record of this beautiful work, one that is slowly deteriorating over time.
Here is a link to a pdf of the herbarium:
https://www.dropbox.com/home?preview=The+Herbarium+of+John+Van+Cleve.pdf

The Mills of Three Springs Run

Since retiring in August of 2015 I've had time to look into things that I was long curious about but did not have the time to investigate.  Since then I have been looking into the changes that were made to the small stream called Hebble Creek in northwest Greene County.  I grew up in this area and know (or knew) the land well.

It turns out the creek had two grist mills on it between 1820 and 1900.  Both of these used rather ingenious methods to maximize the limited water supply and power several sets of  mill stones.  The course of the stream was heavily modified from what is now Fairfield-Yellow Springs Road all the way to the Mad River to feed the mills and control flooding.

The mill are gone now, and they are largely forgotten.  At one time though they were vital parts of the local community.

Here is an article with some details about these mills.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ruu2ky6siv0apjf/The%20Mills%20of%20Three%20Springs%20Run.pdf?dl=0

The Fairfield Mill at it appeared about 1920.  This mill was established around 1820, and was located just west of what became Central High School in Fairborn.  Photo courtesy of Ann Armstrong-Ingoldsby.