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Lynx
Prairie, a federal Natural Landmark, is a series
of 10 prairie patches in Adams County in southern
Ohio. The 500-acre tract is part of the bigger
Edge of Appalachia Preserve that is owned and
managed by the Nature Conservancy and the
Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal.
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WEST UNION, Ohio — Adams
County doesn't look or feel like other Ohio counties.
It is a slice of Kentucky's
bluegrass country — with an open, airy feel unlike much
of southern Ohio because of its unique geology. Early
settlers referenced the region's bald hills or
"buffalo beats."
Tucked along the Ohio River
about 60 miles east of Cincinnati and at the western edge
of the Appalachians, Adams County has some great outdoor
attractions: the Serpent Mound, the 14,000-acre Edge of
Appalachia Preserve and eight state nature preserves.
My most recent excursion
into Adams County took me to Lynx Prairie within the Edge
of Appalachia Preserve and to Chaparral Prairie State
Nature Preserve.
The showcase Richard and
Lucille Durrell Edge of Appalachia Preserve is one of the
most biologically diverse collections of natural systems
in the Midwest, with rugged woodlands, prairie openings,
cliffs, waterfalls, giant promontories and clear streams.
It is the largest privately
owned nature preserve in the Midwest and is a partnership
between the Nature Conservancy and the Cincinnati Museum
Center at Union Terminal.
Three areas within the
preserve, with its 135 rare plants and animals, are open
to the public: Buzzardroost Rock with its up-high views,
the Wilderness with its deep woods and the biologically
important Lynx Prairie.
The 500-acre Lynx Prairie
is known for its unique and beautiful cedar glades or
eastern alkaline barrens with its thin rocky soils. Three
loop trails that together stretch 1.5 miles lead through
Lynx Prairie, the first tract of the Edge preserve to be
acquired 50 years ago.
Visitors will find 10
miniature prairies, surrounded by forests of Virginia
pines and red cedar. They are mostly flat, narrow and wet
in places. They are dominated by big and little bluestem
and Indian grass. The grassland community features a
number of rare plants for Ohio.
Each prairie patch is
different. Some are dominated by prairie dock, another by
coneflowers; another by rare Western sunflowers; another
with blazing stars. Rare plants include blue-hearts, Texas
sandwort, crested coralroot, crane-fly orchid, dwarf
hackberry and spotted wintergreen.
Lynx Prairie with its
dolomite and shale outcroppings honors the work of
ecologist E. Lucy Braun (1889-1971), a University of
Cincinnati professor who first explored Adams County for
its rare plants.
The prairies here are at
the eastern edge of the prairies that once dominated the
Midwest.
The preserve's original 42
acres were purchased in 1959 by the Nature Conservancy,
the national land-conservation group, with financial help
from Cincinnati garden clubs. In 1967, the prairie patches
at Lynx Prairie were designated a federal Natural
Landmark.
The prairies are at their
colorful best in late summer and early fall. By August,
prairie grasses up to 9 feet tall and tall flowers
dominate Lynx Prairie.
The most difficult part of
the hike was finding where the trails into Lynx Prairie
began, at the rear of the cemetery behind the East Liberty
Community Church. Look in the southeast corner of the
cemetery.
There are no bathrooms,
picnic tables or drinking water. Visitors are asked to
stay on the trails to protect the delicate habitat.
To get to Lynx Prairie,
head east on state Route 125 from West Union. Proceed 7.8
miles to the crossroads hamlet of Lynx. Turn right and
head south on Tulip Road. After 0.3 miles, turn left on
Prairie Road into the church parking lot.
The Cincinnati museum and
the Nature Conservancy have built a new visitor center,
the Eulett Center, for the Edge preserve. It is west of
Lynx Prairie on a bluff overlooking Ohio Brush Creek.
Now the Nature Conservancy
wants to connect the Edge with the Ohio Department of
Natural Resources' 63,000-acre Shawnee State Forest to the
east by acquiring an additional 5,881 acres. That would
create an unbroken forest of 83,000 acres, the largest
contiguous forest in Ohio.
The project has been dubbed
the Sunshine Corridor after a local ridge that traverses
the gap between the conserved areas. The Nature
Conservancy recently got a $750,000 Clean Ohio Fund to
purchase the first 654 acres along the Sunshine Corridor.
But it will take years to complete the project and will
cost about $12 million, the group says.
The Edge's Buzzardroost
Rock is a 465-acre tract with great vistas from atop a
cliff 300 feet above Ohio Brush Creek. It's a moderate
three-mile round trip from the trailhead off state Route
125 between West Union and Lynx.
The 2.5-mile yellow-blazed
loop trail at The Wilderness is one of the best day hikes
in Ohio. It's heavily wooded with limestone cliffs,
waterfalls, spring wildflowers and prairie openings.
For more information,
contact the Edge of Appalachia Preserve, 4274 Waggoner
Riffle Road, West Union 45693, 937-544-2188, http://www.cincymuseum.org;
or the Nature Conservancy at 6375 Riverside Drive, Suite
100, Dublin, OH 43017, 614-717-2770, http://www.nature.org/ohio.
I headed about five miles north of West Union to find
state-managed Chaparral Prairie that covers 66 acres of
prairie, forest and old farm fields.
It is an outstanding
example of a cedar barren prairie, complete with common
and uncommon flowers and butterflies. Abundant wildflowers
include prairie dock, whorled rosinweed and spiked
blazing-star.
It was purchased by the
state in 1985 and is home to 14 rare or endangered plant
species including spider milkweed, prairie false indigo
and pink milkwort. The prairie also features one of Ohio's
most extensive populations of rattlesnake-master with its
white prickly-shaped flower.
The preserve is known for
its dry, nutrient-poor soils that often erode off steep
slopes.
Other state nature
preserves in Adams County are Johnson Ridge, Shoemaker,
Whipple, Davis Memorial, Strait Creek Prairie Bluffs
(partly in Pike County), Adams Lake Prairie, and Kamama
Prairie.
For information, write to
the Ohio Division of Natural Areas and Preserves, 2045
Morris Road, Building F-1, Columbus 43229, 614-265-6453, http://www.ohiodnr.com/dnap.
The 1,348-foot-long Serpent Mound off state Route 73 north
of Peebles remains Ohio's biggest mystery and one of its
most special attractions.
The ancient earthwork is
the largest and finest serpent effigy in the United States
and one of Ohio's only effigy mounds. It is a National
Historic Landmark and on the National Register of Historic
Places.
No one is sure which
ancient people built it or why. The grass-covered mound
— it appears to be in the shape of an undulating snake
with a spiral-coiled tail — sits atop a plateau 90 feet
above wooded Ohio Brush Creek.
The mound, managed since
Aug. 1 by the nonprofit Arc of Appalachia group, is 2 to 6
feet in height and from 20 to 25 feet in width as it
stretches and roils nearly a quarter-mile.
There is no evidence of the
Indians who created it burying their dead on the Serpent
Mound. They were buried in other nearby mounds.
The head of the snake is
aligned to the summer solstice sunset and the coils may
point to the winter solstice sunrise and the equinox
sunrise.
For more information, write
to Serpent Mound, 3850 State Route 73, Peebles, OH 45660;
937-587-2796. A Web site is under construction at http://www.arcofappalachia.org.
The site is open daylight to dusk daily. The museum is
closed until next spring. Admission is free but there is a
$7 parking fee.
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