by Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager
“Picture in your mind, if you can, a vast sea of forest when the silence of these woods is broken only by the chattering of the birds, the scream of the wildcat, and the howling of the wolves. Just a vast unbroken panorama of trees, with an occasional stream winding among them.” This quote is taken from the History of Bettsville, written in 1972, and succinctly describes what Seneca County looked like when the very first settlers arrived in the Black Swamp.
June marks the Great Outdoors Month as the weather finally turns, and remains, more pleasant. But the stories that are told in several sources that have been digitized onto the Seneca County Digital Library make the outdoors of Seneca County sound like a nightmare, an “unbroken wilderness and realm of malaria,” describes the History of the First Presbyterian Church, 1830-1962.
Before Ohio became a state, only indigenous people roamed the swampy forests of its northwest corner. A few archaeological sites have been carbon-dated to the Paleo-Indian period when this area was mainly an evergreen forest and, besides these ancient tribes, was home to elk, giant beaver, panthers, even mammoths and mastodons. During the Early Archaic to Late Archaic periods, it transitioned into a deciduous forest containing most of the trees we still see today – oak, beech, maple, elm, ash, hickory, beech, poplar and black walnut.
When Europeans began arriving, they had to fight off the smallest but deadliest of creatures, the mosquito, to larger wild animals including ferocious timber wolves, wild hogs, wild cats, black bears, snakes, fox and wolverines. According to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, as much as 95 percent of Ohio was covered in forest in the early 1800s. Audubon points out that it would have been an excellent habitat not just for the previously mentioned animals, but also woodland bison, elk and mountain lions.
A drawing depicting the Erastus Bowe cabin, which served as a tavern in the wilderness and attracted Josiah Hedges to build Tiffin across from the Sandusky River from Fort Ball.
The very first Europeans stuck close to Fort Ball on the west bank of the Sandusky River, which had been established by the War of 1812, and the near-by tavern owned by Erastus Bowe. The east side of the river was still wilderness until after the early 1820s. In fact, the entire county largely “a foreboding place; primitive to the last degree,” states the 75th Anniversary Souvenir of Tiffin. It’s claimed that the forest was so dense that in certain areas the sunshine never touched the ground, leading to soggy areas year-round. The mosquitos that bred in the standing water gave people such illnesses that they were described to be bundled up and shivering in the middle of July. Some early pioneers gave up and left, but the brave ones who stayed decided the land needed to be cleared. About 10 acres per year was able to be cleared by stripping the bark from the base off the tree, a process called “girdling”. The trees died quickly, were chopped for lumber, and the stumps were eventually removed, turning the area into potential farmland once the sunlight could finally peak through. Another technique called “blazing” was attempted when building make-shift roads (or trails, rather) through the forests, whereby pioneers hewed a piece of bark from the side of a tree as a way of marking it.
The Hunter House across from the Pioneer Mill was one of the very first houses built in Tiffin after it was established. At that time (1820s) it would have been nestled deep in the wilderness.
All of these changes made Ohio eventually look like a very different place just 100 years later. The amount of stripped land reached a peak in the early 1900s before conservation efforts began in the 1920s to reverse the damage. There are a few places in the area where one can see what the original forests looked like before the damage was done. Crall Woods in Greenwich on SR 224 east of Attica in neighboring Huron County is a 146-acre forest containing 44 acres of “old growth” forest once owned by the Sutherland family who never grazed it. The Crall family “continued this tradition” from 1924-2005 when it handed the land over to the park district. It is full of sugar maple, yellow poplar, American basswood and Northern red oak.
Those who might prefer to travel west can visit St. John’s Nature Preserve in Bowling Green, which includes pioneer woods, old-growth forest, wetlands, and prairies all within its 103 acres and trees up to 300 years old. For a longer day trip, some may want to consider Clear Fork Gorge, a National Natural Landmark since 1967. This 29-acre site has been declared “one of the best remaining woodlands in the state,” with its white pine and eastern hemlock.
Old-growth forests are ones with the majority of its trees having almost reached their life expectancy. Another defining feature includes the presence of healthy heat-sensitive plants (protected by the canopy of leaves from these mature trees). We shouldn’t blame our ancestors, though, for stripping the land. They were simply trying to survive in a new, unfamiliar environment very far from their places of origin. A History of New Riegel explains that once people built their homes and added a church to the center of their communities, Seneca County started to have the resemblance of medieval Europe, where most of these pioneers once called home. Knowing one had neighbors in a bleak and desolate place would have been comforting.
As Bettsville’s author stresses, “the loneliness would have been terrible. But they came, stayed, and conquered, and it’s only fitting that we should pause in their memory and hopefully revive an appreciation of the legacy they left us.”
Works cited:
“75th Anniversary Souvenir.” 1897. Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/22962/rec/2
Audubon Ohio. “Audubon Adventures: Ohio’s Forests, Then and Now.” 2010. https://dam.assets.ohio.gov/image/upload/epa.ohio.gov/Portals/42/documents/AA-Forests.pdf
Bowen, J.E. Sandusky Site Near Old Fort. 1983. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/29790
Durrett, John. “History of Bettsville.” 1984. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/29643
Fast, Louisa K. “Early 1800s Homes of Tiffin.” 1975. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/32917
Garn, Lynn Edwin, Ph.D. “The Garn Family”, 2nd ed. 2014. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/65251
Gottsacker, Erin. “Ohio Now Has More ‘Old-Growth’ Forests Than Any Other State. Here’s Why That Matters.” The Ohio Statehouse News Bureau. October 2023. https://www.statenews.org/news/2023-10-18/ohio-now-has-more-old-growth-forests-than-any-other-state-heres-why-that-matters
History of Tiffin Fire Department, 1843-1993. Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/32508/rec/1
Jett, Katherine Griffin. “History of West Lodi.” 1988. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/30110
McConnell, Eric, Ph.D. “Ohio’s Forest Economy.” The Ohio State University Extension. https://ohioline.osu.edu/factsheet/F-80
Moore, R. Braden, Rev. and Thornton, Cecil A., Rev. History of the First Presbyterian Church, 1830-1962. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/35799
Nature Conservancy. “Seeing the Forest for the Trees.” https://www.nature.org/en-us/about-us/where-we-work/united-states/ohio/stories-in-ohio/forestry/
Ohio Department of Natural Resources. Division of Forestry. “State Forest Management”. https://ohiodnr.gov/discover-and-learn/safety-conservation/about-ODNR/forestry/state-forest-management
“Official Souvenir Program Tiffin Glass Festival 1965.” Seneca County Digital Library. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/36358/rec/1
Old Growth Forests Network. “Ohio Forests”. https://www.oldgrowthforest.net/ohio
Seneca County Genealogical Society. “Seneca County, Ohio History and Families”. 1998. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/28319
Wagner, Elaine. “A History of New Riegel.” 1983. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/32008