A success story in Ohio

The reforestation of a small piece of Appalachia

Not Amish Country

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We made a trip to Holmes County, Ohio (aka Amish Country) this past week. I had big plans to share a photograph-rich post about the beauty and culture of the place. Reality intervened and I spent the day alternately behind the wheel watching extremely photogenic scenes roll by, and outside the car, too busy looking and doing to snap pictures. The photo above isn't from Amish Country. It's a field in the floodplain of the Ohio River, the only place in southeastern Ohio that is pancake flat.

That's the problem with plans — events often do not unfold as expected. Rather than a whimsical post about a land stuck in time, I'm writing a matter-of-fact post about southeastern Ohio, the misunderstood Appalachian corner of the state. In the past I've written a little about the history of the place called Turtle Paradise, and I'd like to place it in a slightly larger geographical context.

Stern wheeler on the Ohio River

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Growing up, I didn't know we lived in Appalachia. I learned in school that Ohio was a midwestern state and assumed we were therefore midwesterners, despite the fact that we ate wilted lettuce and spoke with a noticeable twang. Appalachian meant Kentucky hollers and the Blue Ridge, backwards people with coal dust on their faces living in tarpaper shacks and hunting ginseng. That wasn't my family. It wasn't until adulthood that I finally grokked the fact that I was from Appalachia.

Geography isn't the strong suit of most Americans, and those from outside the middle routinely confuse Ohio and Iowa. So it's not surprising that the majority are unaware that Ohio has a hill country that hugs the southern and eastern edges of the state like a rind. Steep hills, narrow, hemlock-filled valleys, and the prevalence of West Virginia jokes characterize this pocket of the state. (Why is West Virginia almost heaven?)

Cemetery on a hill in Ohio's only national forest

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Bordered to the east and south by the Ohio River, the region is geographically and culturally different from the rest of the state, and its history has undeniably been influenced by topography and the abundant natural resouces. During the 1800s there was mass denuding of the wooded hills as Europeans moved in. Where it was sufficiently level, newly cleared ground was plowed for row crops. Pastures and apple orchards replaced old growth forest. The timber that was removed was highly prized not only for building locally and for export to booming cities back east, but also for the iron industry that sprang up during the 1800s. It was in large part the insatiable need for charcoal to feed the iron furnaces that drove the almost total deforestation of the area.

Stills from the film A Forest Returns: The Success Story of Ohio's Only National Forest (available on YouTube) show piles of trunks ready to be transformed into charcoal

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By 1916 the last furnace had ceased operations. The ore had played out and the great forests were memories. The population plummeted as workers and their families moved west and north in search of economic opportunity, leaving behind lifeless hills. When reading about this historic period it's impossible not to think of the frenzied orcs of Isengard felling every tree to feed the fires of Saruman's evil designs.

The photo immediately below from the 1930s shows the area about 20 miles northeast of my home, then a moonscape of devastation. The next picture was taken 75 years later. The ancient forest and its associated ecosystems were gone, but the recovery is nonetheless miraculous.

Photographs courtesy of USFS website

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Following deforestation, erosion had wreaked havoc on the steep hillsides, and much of the land was considered worthless. Close to 250,000 acres were eventually acquired by the federal government to establish Wayne National Forest. Although in some areas the land was left to recover on its own or with the help of private citizens, the Civilian Conservation Corps did much of the restoration work in what was to become national forest land. Young men with no employment opportunities in the cities built temporary dams to slow water, and planted hundreds of thousands of seedlings and many acres of cover crops. Clover and lespedeza were included, in addition to black locust trees, to function as nitrogen fixers. Surprisingly, the restoration efforts looked a lot like permaculture.

Stills from A Forest Returns

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In Wizard's Vale of Middle Earth, the Ents showed up and a forest appeared overnight. It took a bit longer in southeast Ohio, but the trees eventually returned. The recovery is still in progress here on the farm, as evidenced by the photos below. The first is of the flood of 1964, and the second taken today in approximately the same spot.

The landscape has changed so much that I had a hard time figuring out exactly where to stand to take the picture. The entire valley is now filled with black cherry and silver maple, with an understory of spice bush and pawpaw. With much of the farm lying in the floodplain, restoration is much easier here. From the house we look down to the river and up to our nearest neighbor, but the land lacks the steep slopes found to the north and east. Erosion is less of a problem, and frequent high water delivers seeds and a layer of rich mud to foster their development. As I've described many times in past writing, most of the progress here has been achieved by doing nothing.

Much is written these days about the need for reforestation as a method to slow climate change. The resurrection of the forests of Appalachian Ohio show how easy this can be in areas with adequate rainfall. It's not rocket science. Almost 100 years ago, ragtag bands of minimally trained young people living in makeshift barracks helped bring about a miraculous recovery of the land.

The New Deal programs that brought forest restoration to southeast Ohio can accurately be described as socialist. While we are often told socialism is an evil akin to baby eating and puppy torturing, is in fact government using its powers for the good of everyone rather than a tiny minority at the top. In the 1930s, with organizations like the CCC, the federal government did something that is nearly inconceivable today: It took actions that benefited everyone involved. Though the problems we face today are environmentally dire, they are at root political. We don't need fleets of seed-planting drones, complicated software to analyze topography, or layers of NGOs and subcontractors to do restoration work — we need to decide as a nation that it's time to solve our problems. “Though the problems of the world are increasingly complex, the solutions remain embarrassingly simple.”