Ohio's Forests

Witnessing a Quiet Return to Their Former Glory

"Here at last!" the early Ohio settler proclaims to his wife and children, as he hitches his yoke of oxen to a sturdy sycamore tree. From under the seat of his wagon, an iron axe emerges and rhythmic chopping breaks the stillness of the wilderness. "Kindlin' for the fire, logs for a cabin and a clearing for the garden get to work son!" he exclaims. As oaks and hickories, beech, maple and tulip begin falling to the earth like moths eating holes in a blanket, the settlers create a patchwork of clearings among the forested hillsides that once stretched undisturbed for hundreds of miles in every direction.

So dense was the forest surrounding the little clearing of the pioneer homesteads, that instead of attempting to fell each tree with axe or saw, many trees were girdled with an axe. A tree was girdled by cutting a shallow groove around the entire circumference of the trunk where the "living" wood is found. When the dead trees were weakened enough, they were often downed by a wind storm. The downed trees could be cut for firewood or burned in great bonfires. In such a manner, vast tracts of woodland in Ohio were cleared quickly and conveniently for farmland.

The swath of the axe (and the saw) continued to widen across the landscape as the threat of hostile Indians was removed and settlers poured into the Ohio country. Sawmills were built along rivers and streams to supply the lumber needs of growing cities and towns. The industrial age also took its toll on the forest as trees were felled to make charcoal used to fuel the iron furnaces that were once crucial to the economy of southeastern Ohio. Within several generations, early Ohioans had removed, on average, roughly eight of every ten trees from the Ohio landscape.

Gone were the dark forests that harbored hostile Indians, wolves and bears that once lurked outside the frontier homesteads. A new Ohio emerged one that resembled the pastured hillsides of Scotland and Ireland, from which many of the first immigrants originally came. Finely crafted log homes and barns, largely built by German immigrants, stood as weathered, gray monuments to the ancient forests from which they were hewn.

For nearly a hundred years, the newly created croplands prospered the descendants of the early settlers, providing oats and wheat for the mill, corn for feeding hogs (and making whiskey) and hay for feeding cattle. Then, beginning at the turn of the century, the prosperity of many of the farms throughout much of southeastern Ohio began to decline. The great stone furnaces of a once-thriving iron industry became cold and silent amid the desolate landscape their hunger for fuel had created. Families loaded their wagons for roads that led west to fertile bottom lands and broad flat plains that were friendlier to the plow and the plowman than the rugged foothills of the Appalachians.

It wasn't long before weeds and brush began appearing on abandoned farms in many rural areas of Ohio. Pioneer species of trees instead of pioneers began to reestablish their claim to land that was more suitable for trees than row crops. Tall, stately eastern red cedars marched onto the open fields like silent green sentinels. Hawthorns, sweet gums and aspen were among the first to join the invasion of old, abandoned farmlands. The spread of some, such as the hawthorn and cedar, was aided by birds which ate their fruits. Other trees took advantage of the wind and water to carry their seeds or nuts from the fence row and woodlot, the river bank and ridge top that served as scattered outposts amid the barren farmlands. These remnant woodlots slowly regained the territory they once lost to the axe and the plow. The tide of the battle began to turn in favor of the forest once again. Soon the open fields of weeds and grasses were gone, replaced by scrub woods composed of small trees and shrubs that thrived in sunny conditions. Then the larger, more shade-tolerant species of trees began to establish their dominance in the young wood lots, shading out the shorter, smaller tree species which had preceeded them. Within a hundred years, the beech-maple, oak-hickory and other "climax" forest associations were once again firmly reestablished on many of their ancestral homelands, along with walnut, cherry, ash and tulip.

Visitors to our state parks can witness many of these giants of the forest and the variety of shrubs and wildflowers beneath their forest canopy, appearing much the same today as they did to the early settlers when Ohio was the western frontier. Missing from the mountainous regions are the once-common stands of American chestnut, eradicated by a blight in the early 1900's, and all but gone from the lowland forests are the American elm, killed by Dutch elm disease that arrived shortly thereafter. Otherwise, there has probably been little change in the species diversity of the "second-growth" forests that have replaced the virgin forests that preceeded them nearly two centuries ago.

The natural reforestation that has occured throughout much of the state is a testament to the remarkable reproductive capabilities of our forest species and the underlying abundance of Ohio's soil and water resources. Time heals all wounds or so they say. Thank God, some of our forests are back to stay.

--Lynn Boydelatour
Interpretive Services Section Manager