View from a ridge near Benton Ridge, Ohio, which demarks the edge of the former Great Black Swamp.
The ridge was formed at the southern shore of the ancient lake. In the distance, a completely flat expanse of agricultural land extends to the horizon. In the foreground a ditch used to drain the swamp is visible.
The Great Black Swamp (also known simply as the Black Swamp) was a glacially fed wetland in northwest Ohio and northeast Indiana, United States, that existed from the end of the Wisconsin glaciation until the late 19th century. Comprising extensive swamps and marshes, with some higher, drier ground interspersed, it occupied what was formerly the southwestern part of proglacialLake Maumee, a Holocene precursor to Lake Erie. The area was about 25 miles (40km) wide (north to south) and 100 miles (160km) long, covering an estimated 1,500 square miles (4,000km2); other estimates put the area of the swamp at 6,700 square kilometres (2,600sqmi).[3][4] The Ohio Department of Natural Resources in 1988 stated that the Great Black Swamp covered a total area of 3,072,000 acres and was drained between 1859 and 1885.[5]
Gradually drained and settled in the second half of the 19th century, it is now highly productive farmland. However, this development has been detrimental to the ecosystem as a result of agricultural runoff.[6] This runoff, in turn, has contributed to frequent toxic algal blooms in Lake Erie.[7]
The land once covered by the swamp lies primarily within the Maumee River and Portage Riverwatersheds in northwest Ohio and northeast Indiana. The boundary was determined primarily by ancient sandy beach ridges formed on the shores of Lakes Maumee and Whittlesey, after glacial retreat several thousand years ago. It stretched roughly from Fort Wayne, Indiana, eastward to the Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge near Port Clinton along the Lake Erie shore, and from (roughly) US 6 south to Findlay[8] and North Star, Ohio in Darke County.[9] Near its southern edge at the southwestern corner of present-day Auglaize County, wheeled transportation was impossible during most of the year, and local residents thought the rigors of travel to be unsuitable for anyone except adult men.[10]
The vast swamp was a network of forests, wetlands, and grasslands. In the lowest, flattest areas, prone to permanent inundation, deciduous swamp forests predominated, characterized especially by species of ash, elm, cottonwood and sycamore. In slightly higher areas with some topographic relief and better drainage, beech, maples, basswood, tuliptree and other more mesic species were dominant. On elevated beach ridges and moraines with good to excessive drainage, more xeric species, especially oak and hickory, were dominant. The area contained non-forested wetlands, particularly marsh and wet prairies, with marshes being particularly extensive along the Lake Erie shoreline east of Toledo.
History of the Swamp
Geologic and biologic past
Northwest Ohio Lidar map, showing the footprint of the Laurentide ice sheet and location of former Great Black Swamp
The Laurentide ice sheet covered northwest Ohio during the Last Glacial Period. Lake Maumee developed within the ice sheet's footprint after the ice sheet gradually retreated out of northwest Ohio about 24,000 years ago. The Great Black Swamp slowly formed following the Maumee Torrent, which was a catastrophic draining of Lake Maumee approximately 14,000 to 17,000 years Before Present, or BP. This mega-flood and the ice sheet both shaped the landscape in ways that can be seen in present-day Lidar maps of northwest Ohio.
Northwest Ohio is in the Huron-Erie Lake Plain, which consists of the Maumee Lake Plains, the Oak Openings, the Paulding Plains, and the Marblehead Drift/Limestone Plain.[11] The Huron-Erie Lake Plain is a lacustrine plain covered with clay-rich till between 15,000 and 13,000 years BP. Its bedrock is Devonian in origin and is expressed as dark, dense shale. Deposits of limestone, covered by 20 to 80 feet (6 to 24 meters) of till, can be found just south of the Maumee River, while the area just north of that consists of glacial drift, 90 feet (27 meters) thick, over shale bedrock.[12] Clay leaching from weathered shale created fine-grain sediment along the moraine that runs through what is now the city of Defiance. Aeolian sand dunes were also deposited in other parts of the plain. The clay, till, and organic soil retained water throughout much of the year, and the ice sheet left behind depressions and "kettle holes" which allowed for the accumulation of peat and decayed vegetation.[13] Ancient fluvial deposits of lacustrine sands over diamicton contained organic-rich sand. From these geological findings, one study concluded that the glacial lake that preceded the Swamp did not have a traditional beach, but instead had a chain of islands for a shoreline. It also studied how lake levels changed before the warm Bølling-Allerød Interstadial 14,690 to 12,890 years BP.[14] This time period is associated with Meltwater pulse 1A when global sea levels rose between 16 meters (52 feet) and 25 meters (82 feet).
An illustration showing how a melting glacier forms and shapes a moraine, a lacustrine plain, a proglacial lake, and other land and water features. This is how the Huron-Erie Lake Plain and Lake Maumee were formed, followed later by the Great Black Swamp.
End moraines are huge, curved ridges of till outline where the outer margin of the glacier once stood. They can hold proglacial lakes and create braided streams and outwash fans. They sometimes exhibit a hummocky land surface across the till plains characterized by rounded knolls and depressions, which are called "knob and kettle topography".[15] One account from the early 1800s noted the glacial alluvium of the lake plain, and described the streams as "sluggish in their motions, their bed having little inclination".[16] The average slope of the land was about 4 feet (1.2 M) per mile.[17]
Moraines contained the water of the Swamp, which would slowly flow in a braided and meandering pattern out into the Maumee, Sandusky, and Portage Rivers towards Lake Erie. The water saturated a land that had been flattened for tens of thousands of years under the weight of the ice sheet. The ice sheet was, by one estimate, at least 300 to 500 meters high (984 to 1,640 feet high) in some places around the Great Lakes, and as high as 1,200 meters (3,937 feet) around Hudson Bay and Quebec.[18] Other estimates place the height of the ice sheet as high as two miles in other areas.
An illustration showing how the shape of the terrain influences a variety of wetlands. The Great Black Swamp's terrain, which was shaped by a glacier, had different kinds of wetlands, upland forests, prairies and savannas.
Hardwood swamps occurred in poorly drained depressions on the Huron-Erie Lacustrine Plain and also on glacial outwash plains and channels, end moraines, till plains, and perched dunes. Unlike southeast Michigan, the Great Black Swamp in northwest Ohio and eastern Indiana did not have conifer swamps. Historically, the soils were similar to today: acidic to alkaline loam (with silt, sand, or clay) and muck. Minerotrophic swamps and marshes also existed along with peatlands. Pit-and-mound topography allowed for different kinds of forests and wetlands to flourish, with surface water and groundwater dynamics (often altered by beaver dams) influencing the different cycles of matter and the composition of different species of trees, shrubs, flowering, and aquatic/emergent plants.[20]
Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene animals living around Lake Maumee and the early formations of the Great Black Swamp included giant short-faced bears and giant beavers. A fossil remain (a tooth) of the Dire wolf, dated 11,000 to 12,000 years BP, was found in the former Swamp region in Sheriden Cave, and was later used to study the DNA of the species.[21] Climate of the Great Black Swamp and the rest of Ohio was impacted by the 8.2 kiloyear event, which was a rapid drop in global cooling temperatures, and included two phases of wind-blown silt, or loess, which was deposited across the region between 8,950 and 8,005 calibrated years BP.[22]
Evidence of early Holocene Native Americans, or Paleo-Indians, can be found in northern Ohio dating to around 11,000 years ago. This is suggested by studies at locations such as the Paleo Crossing site and Nobles Pond site. Evidence of early humans exist at Sheriden Cave, located in the former Great Black Swamp, in what used to be mixed oak forests surrounded by marshes and swamps. Radiocarbon dating suggests humans lived in and around the Swamp between 11,000 and 12,000 years ago. The evidence also included Clovis culture artifacts. As the climate of ancient Ohio shifted to seasons with warmer temperatures, the indigenous peoples adapted and continued to develop their societies and cultures, from the Archaic period some 10,000 years ago through the Woodland period (3,000 years BP to 1,000 years BP), and leading through first contact with Europeans, in what became known as Ohio Country, starting from the mid-1600s and into the centuries after.
The Native Americans managed their lands around the Great Black Swamp during the wet and dry seasons. Villages would migrate with seasonal changes and when new food sources were needed.[24] Villages depended on hunting and fishing, would grow corn, and cultivate and manage their lands by burning the soil. This is similar to the prescribed burns used today by wildlife and natural resource departments in nature refuges and management areas across the country.
”Canoes in a Fog, Lake Superior” by Frances Anne Hopkins, 1869. The painting depicts birch bark canoes carrying groups of indigenous people. The painting is in the collections of the Glenbow Museum, Calgary, Alberta (ACC. NO. 55.81.1)
After the reintroduction of horses in the United States, indigenous peoples used horses to traverse almost any terrain, as well as birch-bark canoes that were 4 feet (1.2 meters) wide, 3 feet (0.9 meters) deep, and 35 feet (10.7 meters) long.[25] Unlike the larger birch-bark canoes which could carry more people and goods and which had a more sophisticated construction, simple dugout canoes were also used, measuring 15 feet (4.6m) long.[26] The canoes allowed them to travel across lakes and rivers for many miles.
Anishinaabe peoples inhabited the land adjacent to the Great Black Swamp for generations.[27] Villages bordered the swamp, with the Miami people along the Maumee-Wabash portage and along the Great Miami and Little Miami Rivers. The Wyandot people lived in villages along the Scioto River east of the swamp, settling as far south as the Ohio River.[28] The swamp was the trapping ground for many of the villages in the Ohio River valley, where control was divided by area.[28] The Great Black Swamp became home to the largest, most prominent settlement of the Shawnee in what would become the state of Ohio.[29] Lower Shawneetown was established in the 1730s.[28]
Indigenous assimilation, removals, and treaties for the Swamp
"Charge of the Dragoons at Fallen Timbers," painted by R. T. Zogbaum for Harper's Magazine, 1895. The painting depicts the events of the Battle of Fallen Timbers which took place on the Maumee River in the middle of the Great Black Swamp in 1794, and was the final battle of the Northwest Indian War.
The establishment of the Northwest Territory in 1787, by the United States in Congress Assembled, signaled the beginning of major changes for both the indigenous peoples in northwest Ohio and the Great Black Swamp. After the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794, the Northwest Indian War ended. The Treaty of Greenville of 1795 reserved the entire northwest area of Ohio for the indigenous peoples, the Native Americans, including the entire Great Black Swamp.[30] But, with a series of treaties between 1807 and 1833, the Great Black Swamp regional lands were taken away from the Native Americans by the U.S. government for sale to white settlers. The Treaty of Detroit (1807) chipped away at the northwest Swamp lands of the indigenous.[31] The Treaty of Brownstown (1808) further chipped away at their lands.[32]
It has been speculated that the name of the Great Black Swamp was first recorded during the War of 1812, either in reference to its black soil or to the way the trees blocked the sunlight or to the general difficulties its terrain caused for military movement and transport.[33] The indigenous fought the Americans in the first Ohio battle of the War of 1812. It happened on September 29, 1812, in the Great Black Swamp, on what is now known as the Marblehead Peninsula, which separates Lake Erie from Sandusky Bay in Ottawa County.[34] It ended in a draw. Fighting against American expansion since 1800, Shawnee leaders Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa formed an alliance of indigenous nations.[35] After their defeat at the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811, the indigenous confederacy united with the British during the War of 1812, but disbanded following the death of Tecumseh in the Battle of the Thames in 1813.
After the Treaty of Greenville (1814) came the Treaty of Fort Meigs in 1817, when the entire Great Black Swamp itself, stretching from Fort Wayne to the shores of Lake Erie, were ceded by the indigenous peoples to the U.S. government.[36] In 1818, Lewis Cass, Territorial Governor of Michigan, stated an interest to develop northwest Ohio for European-American use, and to take it by force, even if it caused, he said, the "extinction" of the indigenous peoples living there.[37]
Historians that acknowledge the genocide of the Native Americans often clash with the denials of such human atrocities. An eliminatory dynamic in Settler colonialism was driven by the desire to acquire land and resources, and by anti-indigenous racist beliefs that portrayed the indigenous as "inferior" and as obstacles to conquest.[38] Although the term Manifest destiny was first used in 1845, the ideas that developed it already existed in places such as northwest Ohio in the early 1800s. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 enabled white settlers to continue the violent and physical removals of indigenous peoples from their lands.
In the Great Black Swamp, on the Maumee River in Wood County, stood the Ebenezer Mission School, also known as the Old Maumee Mission School, from 1822 to 1834. It taught indigenous children and youth. It consisted of a schoolhouse with quarters for the missionary family, a blacksmith shop, a horse stable, a stove house, and also land for cultivating crops and keeping livestock.[40] The School's Mission House was two stories with a large cellar.[41] The school was Presbyterian. Its patrons, the Western Presbyterian Missionary Society of Pennsylvania, owned the island in the river, now called Missionary Island, and 372 acres of land opposite the island in Wood County for the Indian Missionary Station.[42] That was where Rev. Isaac Van Tassel and his wife Lucia ran the school, aided by two assistants and their wives, and also by several women as teachers, as well as a few more white people working as mechanics, carpenters, and laborers. The School was focused on "Christianizing and civilizing the Indians", as they called it, and most of the time, it had 80 to 150 indigenous boys and girls in attendance, from ages 6 or 7 to 20 years. Activities also included sports, sledding, making maple sugar, and gathering hickory nuts, which they sold, by thousands of bushels, to traders and shipped to eastern markets.[43]
The students were mostly from the Ottawa, Chippewa, Miami, Shawnee, Munsee, Wyandotte, and Potawatomi nations. Rev. Tassel taught both children and also their parents and elders from their groups when he would travel to visit them in their lands.[44] They also preached in nearby white settlements.[45] At the School, the students learned the Bible, arithmetic, grammar, and geography.[46] The teachers, including Tassel and his wife, learned indigenous languages, including Ottawa and Chippewa, and were able to translate religious lectures and hymns. They provided the indigenous children with a spelling book that had translations of scriptures and hymns, some of them in the Ottawa language.[47] The Ottawa children had always called the Western Basin of Lake Erie home, known in their own language as "Gitche Gumegsuwach" (Get-she-gum-eg-sug-wach).[48]
Based on records from that time period, the community the school had been developing was growing, until the Indian Removal program started to force indigenous peoples off their lands and induced them to sell their lands to the U.S. government. Tassel donated part of his School's land, some 600 to 700 acres, to the Ottawa people for them to live on.[49] This was not to last. The School was closed in April 1834 because of the U.S. government's Indian Removal program, which had moved many of the populations west of the Mississippi River.[50] As of 2025, the school is not listed as a boarding school by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.[51]
Additional treaties made during the Removals were the Treaty with the Ottawa in August 1831, which relinquished the lands around what is now the town of Ottawa, Ohio.[52] Another treaty with the Wyandotte in 1832 relinquished the lands north of what is now Carey, Ohio, and which now include the Springville Marsh State Nature Preserve.[53] A final treaty, this time with the Ottawa, signed in February 1833, would relinquish the lands on the shore of the Maumee River opposite the future city of Toledo.[54]
By 1843, the Indian removals in Ohio completed the process of white settlers stripping the land away from the many indigenous peoples whose ancestors had called northwest Ohio and the Great Black Swamp home for thousands of years, including the Wyandotte, Seneca, Delaware, Shawnee, Potawatomi, Ottawa, Chippewa, Miami, Eel River, Wea, Kickapoo, Piankeshaw, and Kaskaskia. Other indigenous peoples affected by the Removals included the Peoria and the Munsee, who, while not permanent residents of northwestern Ohio like the other nations, did have a significant presence in the area.
During the Removals, Americans authorized to work with indigenous groups as agents would assure the indigenous peoples that they would always own the land they would be moved to out west, in Indian Territory. It was recorded that an agent was told by a Wyandotte chief:
He promised the same thing to us at our last treaty; that if we would sell all but this reservation, he would protect us from the encroachments of the whites, and keep us in peace, and never ask us to sell another foot of our land. This was not ten years ago; and now you are at your old trade of trying to drive us away again. Besides, it would be no better if we were yonder; for there is no land or swamp so poor, but white men will want it; and if the President did not fulfill his word here, will he do it yonder? No! You white men never will be satisfied till the blue water of the great lakes, in which the sun sets, has drank the last drop of Indian blood. Here are our homes; and we are now beginning to live comfortably… Here, too, are the graves and bones of our fathers, our wives, and our children.[55]
Draining the Swamp
First stages of settlement and development
A map of the Great Black Swamp, indicating its extent during the nineteenth century
After the defeat and forced relocation of the Native Americans, the progress of the drainage of the Great Black Swamp increased in parallel with the settlement of white Americans into the area.[27] Although much of the area to the east, south, and north was settled in the early 19th century, the dense habitat and difficulty of travel through the swamp delayed its development by several decades.
The Black Swamp Mutiny took place in 1813, during the Battle of the Thames, when American soldiers marched to fight the British in Ontario. When they got lost in the Swamp's vast environment, their prisoners revolted, but the mutiny was ended without bloodshed.[56] A corduroy road (from modern-day Fremont, Ohio, to Perrysburg, Ohio) was constructed through the Maumee Road Lands in 1825, and was overlaid with gravel in 1838. Travel in the wet season could still take days or even weeks. The impassibility of the swamp was an obstacle during the Toledo War (1835–36); unable to traverse the swamp, the Michigan and Ohio militias never came to battle. Settlement of the region was also inhibited by endemicmalaria. The disease was a chronic problem for residents of the region until the area was drained and former mosquito-breeding grounds were dried up.
The United States General Land Office, established in 1812, oversaw the surveying and platting of Ohio that had been started by the Land Ordinance of 1785 with its Public Land Survey System. In order to sell settlers undeveloped land, including the land within the Great Black Swamp area, surveyors traveled to inspect the land and record what type of landscape was there. These descriptions helped settlers, including people from outside the Ohio Lands and also people from the American coasts and immigrants from Europe, to buy the land sight unseen.
GIS map showing presettlement vegetation of Ohio early 1800s, created from data recorded by 19th-century surveyors. The map shows the outlines of the Great Black Swamp as it used to exist in the early 1800s.A GIS map showing the extent of the Great Black Swamp into southern Michigan. This map was created using records from the first surveyors who, in the early 1800s, recorded all the types of vegetation within each square mile
According to a Michigan Natural Features Inventory report on the General Land Office Surveys that were conducted between 1816 and 1856, "Surveyors were instructed to note the exact location of wetlands, lakes and streams, comment on the agricultural potential of soils, note the quantity and quality of timber resources… Tree species and diameter was also noted… At section corner and half-mile points, witness trees were selected from nearby trees in the northeast, northwest, southeast, and southwest quadrants. The exact bearing and distance of each witness tree in relation to the associated corner post was also measured and recorded. Recently burned areas, windthrows, and beaver floodings were recorded along the section lines, as were various cultural features, of either Native American or early-European settler origin."[57] These detailed records that were used to sell land to the 19th-century settlers are now being used today to create electronic pre-settlement vegetation maps for Ohio.[58] Using Geographic Information System (GIS) computer tools, researchers can identify on these maps what kinds of habitats and environments existed over two hundred years ago. Areas of the Swamp located north of the Maumee River that stretched into Michigan are also recorded in detail on GIS pre-settlement vegetation maps.[59]
The Land Act of 1820 had brought the minimum price of land in the U.S. down from $2.00 per acre to $1.25 per acre. This price drop helped stimulate interest in areas like the Swamp. In the 1850s, settlers braved the challenges of turning the Swamp into farms, and gambled their safety and fortunes within the lands known as the Congress Lands, which were for sale to the general public. Information collected by the early surveyors included divisions of the land into square sections, with each section consisting of 36 square miles. Each square mile established a township that the settlers would call home.
A work crew clears a section of the Swamp in the late 1800s
In the 1850s, the states began an organized attempt to drain the swamp for agricultural use and ease of travel. Various projects were undertaken over a 40-year period. The Swamp Land Act of 1850 significantly propelled the drainage of wetlands across the United States, including the Great Black Swamp. In 1859, the Ohio General Assembly passed a law, famously known as the "Ohio Ditch Law", enabling the creation of ditches to allow settlers to create farms by draining wetlands.[60]
From the 1850s to the mid-1880s, the Great Black Swamp was drained by settlers digging open ditches by hand in order to lower the water table. After the water from the immediate wetland would drop into the ditches, the settlers would install "clay tiles", which were basically pipes made out of fired clay. The settlers would bury the tiles in the newly exposed ground, which would then drain excess water into the ditches.
The drainage tiles were made from the clay that existed in the Swamp's soil. Henry Howe, a historian from the 19th century, described the fertile soil as "black decaying matter" a foot deep, and that it was followed by several feet of "rich yellow clay, having large quantities of the fertilizing substances of lime and silex", and a "stratum of black clay of great depth".[61] Settlers would, in time, turn this soil into the fields for their farms.
Settlers built their homes on the river banks and sand ridges.[62] They often made their homes out of logs, and hunted game in the Swamp for food, and also for skins and furs to make clothing and other items.[63] Settlers caught large quantities of fish in the sections of rapids of the Sandusky and Maumee Rivers.[64] In open wet prairies without trees, water could be 4 feet (1.2 M) deep, going up to a horse's saddle skirt.[65] Martin Kaatz, a historian from the mid-20th century, wrote about accounts from the early 1800s that stated the trees were 100 feet (30 M) high, and that their leaves "nearly shut out the sun's rays except during the period of high sun".[66] Howe also described the Swamp's dense forests and foliage as being "almost impenetrable to the rays of the sun", making life in the Swamp a daunting challenge for white settlers.[61]
"Confused speculation": Public health crises in the Swamp
Diseases and epidemics were common during the draining of the Swamp. An Ohio public health official in the 1940s commented on the general ignorance in Ohio about diseases and epidemics between 1788 and 1873, describing it as "confused speculation".[67] While symptoms were recorded in medical journals and notes during that time in Ohio, there was no knowledge of the causes of many diseases. Due to their high mortality rate, fear and panic would possess the first settlers in the Swamp, who would often blame the Swamp itself for every death, infection, and injury, leading many to call the City of Toledo and the Great Black Swamp, "The Graveyard of the Midwest".[68] One incident in particular involved the town of Gilboa in 1852, which was located next to the Swamp in Putnam County. A cholera outbreak caused nearly 600 people to flee the town in fear and terror. Thirteen people were reported killed by the cholera.[69] It was later determined that a damp cellar that stored trash and decomposing vegetable matter was the source of the outbreak.[70]
Dr. Daniel Drake was one of Ohio's prominent physicians who encouraged education as the first line of defense against epidemics by working with local governments in Ohio, and by publishing books and pamphlets on infectious diseases with the best information available at the time.[67] In 1850, Drake published a book connecting geography to disease, in which he blamed the Great Black Swamp for what he described as "autumnal fevers" that afflicted and even killed large numbers of people.[71]
However, while wetlands and even migrating waterfowl are contamination vectors for diseases like cholera, caused by the bacteria Vibrio cholerae, and also Pasteurella multocida, or avian cholera, it is ultimately the lack of human hygiene and sanitation that lead to cholera epidemics.
Malaria was another disease deadly to the people in the Swamp, but no one knew that it was transmitted by mosquitoes until 1880 when Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran determined that mosquitoes, and not "bad air", were the cause of malaria after discovering plasmodium in the blood of his patients in Algeria. The exact number of deaths caused by malaria in the Great Black Swamp from the 1850s to the 1880s is not precisely known. Because of "confused speculation", misdiagnosis of malaria was common, and the causes of death (or even the number of deaths) was often unknown. Even the 1870 U.S. census noted the absence of reliable death records for that census year, describing it as the "gross incompleteness of the Returns of Deaths", although it was able to create a continental U.S. map showing a high proportion of deaths in northwestern Ohio from malaria.[72]
Indigenous peoples living around the Great Lakes and the Great Black Swamp suffered significant losses, from the 1600s to the 1800s, due to endemics of diseases. Ironically, the major endemics that claimed countless indigenous lives did not come from the Swamp itself, but from the Europeans and early American settlers who brought new viruses and diseases to Ohio, and who were already immune to them. New diseases from Europe decimated indigenous populations across North and South America. By the 1600s, new diseases killed an estimated 90% of all indigenous peoples, and triggered significant changes to the environmental landscapes they used.[73]Smallpox devastated indigenous communities around the Great Lakes and northwest Ohio in the mid-1600s.[74] Historians debate on how germ warfare was deliberately used by European-Americans against the indigenous peoples in order to reduce their population size, and gain military and territorial advantage over them.[75] The indigenous peoples had lived with the Great Black Swamp for at least 11,000 years, but it was not until contact with Europeans, and their diseases, that they suffered from major population declines.
By the 1860s and 1870s, germ theory became more widely accepted as the cause for diseases, thanks to prominent advocates in the late 19th century. Public health was significantly improved in 1886, when Ohio's government created a State Board of Health to educate the public, to help prevent the spread of infections and diseases, and to end the era of "confused speculation".[76]
The Underground Railroad in the Great Black Swamp
Photo of Reverend William King (1812–1895), minister and abolitionist. Rev. King established a settlement in Canada for fugitive slaves fleeing slavery in the U.S. The trail to Canada would lead them through the Great Black Swamp. An estimated 1,000 people followed this trail to Buxton. Photo credit: Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives.
The Swamp offered hope for people escaping slavery from the American South in the form of the Underground Railroad. During slavery, wetlands such as swamps played critical roles in the sheltering and transporting of slaves escaping southern plantations to the North. The Great Dismal Swamp in North Carolina and Virginia, for example, shielded everyone, including the people who lived there and the people traveling to the next station towards safety in the North.[77]Harriet Tubman worked as a slave her whole life in the marshes and swamps of the Eastern Shore of Maryland, which gave her the skills to help navigate the difficult wetland terrain to gain her freedom, and to lead others out of slavery.[78] In the midwest, The Great Black Swamp was also joined in the Underground Railroad by wetlands in Indiana, such as the swamps and marshes of Marion County where mostly Quakers, devoted to the abolitionist movement, led the slaves to freedom.[79]
Ohio never had slavery, but it was settled by many white people from the South who continued other forms of oppression and discrimination by creating the Black Laws of 1804 and 1807. By codifying white supremacy in Ohio, black people lived there under the strictest and cruelest restrictions, and they were even exposed to being kidnapped and trafficked to the South where they would be sold to enslavers.[80] This made the Great Black Swamp even more important for the Underground Railroad as its often difficult terrain and foreboding presence to the locals helped to conceal slaves fleeing to Canada.
In 1998, the United States Congress passed legislation which created a program for the National Park Service called the Network to Freedom in order to honor, preserve, and promote the people who participated in freeing the slaves.[81] The Network to Freedom officially recognizes three sites used for the Railroad that were in the Great Black Swamp, and provides a map of their locations.[82] This map can be cross-referenced with GIS presettlement vegetation maps to identify what the land was like for the slaves when they first arrived in the Great Black Swamp.[58]
One site is the Howard Family Farm on Beaver Creek in Grand Rapids in Wood County, which existed in an area (according to early land surveys) that consisted of Mixed Oak and Beech forests and Elm-Ash swamp forests south of the Maumee River. The John King Farm is a second site across the Maumee River, and served as a station for the Railroad from 1838 until the end of the American Civil War. It was located at Route 109 in Delta, Fulton County, in an area that consisted of Oak Savanna and Elm-Ash swamp forests. Connected to stations near the Michigan border, this site was also followed by the King Cemetery, the third site, located further north in Delta, Fulton County, in an area that was all Elm-Ash swamp forests.
The Cemetery memorializes the abolitionistReverend William King, founder of the Elgin Settlement (North Buxton) where many people escaping slavery sought freedom. Rev. King began his mission to free the slaves in 1848.[83] His story was told in Annie Straith Jamieson's 1925 book, "William King: Friend and Champion of Slaves".[84]
New arrivals: Farming and industry
After the American Civil War, the United States focused on westward expansion, and by the 1860s, more than 30,000 miles of railroad track existed in the nation. The railroads of Ohio consumed 1 million cords of wood annually just for fuel (the amount of wood used for railroad ties is unknown), leading to intense timber cutting and land clearing which eliminated most of Ohio's wetlands, including the Great Black Swamp.[85]
Oil wells of the Cygnet oil pool in Bloom Township, Wood County, Ohio around 1885. This site was recorded by surveyors in the early 1800s as having been Beech Forest and Elm-Ash Swamp Forest, next to Prairie Grasslands.
Arriving alone or with their families, it was the job of the settlers, many of whom had purchased the land sight unseen, to chop down trees, build their homes and their furniture, dig ditches, hunt wild game for food, and prepare their land for their crops and their dairy. Other enterprises emerged to expand the wealth of the settlers, including gristmills and sawmills, logging and lumbering, and then later, in the 1880s, oil and gas fields in Wood and Hancock counties.[86] High pressure natural gas was discovered near Findlay while drilling for water in 1884, and petroleum was first discovered in Lima in 1885.[87] Findlay and Bowling Green were the two principal centers of fossil fuel production in the 1880s, creating a manufacturing industry that included glass factories and lime burning.[88]Iron ore imported to Ohio was smelted in Paulding County from the late 1860s to the mid-1880s, with each furnace burning charcoal from about 1,000 acres of local forest each year.[89] More than 50 drainage tile factories operated in northwest Ohio by 1880, in compliance with Ohio's Ditch Law and with the land draining needs of the farmers, factories, and land owners.[90]
As white settlers from other parts of America arrived in northwest Ohio to turn the Swamp into farmland, so too did an influx of immigrants from Europe. Irish immigrants helped to drain the swamp, build churches, and develop the land while also bringing their culture and customs to the area.[91] German-speaking people, from the Austrian Empire, Switzerland (which was coming out of the Napoleonic era), the German Confederation and then later the German Empire, and other regions from Central and Eastern Europe, also contributed to the transformation of the Swamp into agriculture.[92]
A section of the Miami and Erie Canal in Maumee, Ohio approximately 1900.
Such immigrants also contributed to the construction of the Miami and Erie Canal from 1825 to 1845, which ran down the middle of the Swamp from Toledo to Defiance along the Maumee River, and south through Paulding and Van Wert counties, which were almost entirely elm-ash swamp forest. The economic importance of the canal was significant both to American settlers and immigrants, as it would provide a supply route for farm products, logging, and other commercial goods.
Other immigrants from Europe, who settled first in Cleveland, included Hungarians who had left their homeland, first when it was the Kingdom of Hungary and then when it was the Austro-Hungarian Empire. They left for places like northwestern Ohio, often because of poverty and over-population in rural areas in their homeland, which was made worse by a semi-feudal land system that created social and economic inequalities for them and their families.[93]
A large wave of Polish immigrants arrived in Toledo and northwestern Ohio in the 1870s and 1880s, when much of the Swamp was already drained. Other ethnic groups fleeing economic, religious, and political challenges from Central and Eastern Europe included people from Galicia, in what is now southeastern Poland and Western Ukraine. While some of these immigrants worked in the various industries in Toledo, others farmed in the former Great Black Swamp, with the ability to own their own land, a right that had been taken away from them back in their homeland.[94]
Businessmen and industrialists looking to capitalize on the Swamp's rich natural resources included Eber Brock Ward. In 1863, he purchased 4,089 acres of swamp forest and coastal marshes along Lake Erie in Lucas County and called it "New Jerusalem" (which later became Jerusalem Township). He had a canal dug between Cedar Creek and Lake Erie to transport goods, and although he brought a steam-powered dredger to help dig the canal, most of the work was done by hand. Lumbering was profitable in that section of the Great Black Swamp until 1895, when a muck fire burned for three months, destroying the rest of the trees near the canal.[95]
Bowling Green, Ohio resident James B. Hill expedited the draining of swampy areas with his Buckeye Traction Ditcher.[96] Hill's ditching machine laid drainage tiles at a record pace. First built in 1893, and patented in 1894, it was the first successful steam-driven tractor ditcher.[97]
Fate of the environment
A Lidar map showing man-made ditches and roads situated vertically and horizontally in grids. They intersect with shallow meandering stream channels that existed before the area was ditched in the mid-1800s. The Jackson Cutoff Ditch is seen on this map as a vertical line towards the Maumee River between Custar and Milton Center.
The development of railroads and a local drainage tile industry contributed greatly to drainage and settlement.[98] The biggest contributor to the loss of the Swamp was the conversion of wetland to farm through the construction of a complex network of ditches. The Swamp in Wood County, for example, was destroyed by ditches including the "Jackson Cut-Off", which drained 30,000 acres and cost $110,000 to build in the mid to late 1800s.[99] The Jackson Cutoff Ditch intercepts the original meanders of Yellow and Brush Creeks and the North Branch of the Portage River. It was dug to divert these headwaters into Beaver Creek, which connects to the Maumee River, and to drain parts of Wood, Henry, Hancock, and Putnam Counties.[100]
Modern Lidar maps can show how deep ditches divide the land into a vertical and horizontal grid that moves the water towards the Maumee River. The Lidar maps also show the shallow meandering channels of the creeks and streams that existed before the land was ditched by the settlers. Today, challenges for farming communities include the constant maintenance of these ditches to prevent flooding, both in the area local to the blockage and in the areas upstream.
The 1920 United States census reported that the State of Ohio had a total of 24,984 miles of completed open ditches and 9,205 miles of completed tile drains (both numbers excluding ditches and tile drains that were being planned or under construction).[101] About 15,000 miles of these reported ditches were in the former Great Black Swamp region alone.[102]
The State of Ohio had over 24 million acres of forest, but by 1883, it only had 4 million.[103] By the late 1880s, virtually all of the trees in the Great Black Swamp were cut down and used for fuel and lumber. It took years to remove the tree stumps and build the ditches before the land could be farmed, and the last photograph historians have of the Swamp, taken in Paulding County in 1890, is of a field completely covered in tree stumps, with small pools of water, stretching as far as the eye can see.[104]
Historian Martin Kaatz romanticized the way settlers engaged with nature, stating that they had to "wage war" with the environment, and that "trees had to be felled, underbrush cleared, stumps removed, and predatory animals killed".[105] Between 1800 and 1855, settlers had completely extirpatedwolves, bobcats, elk, mountain lions, and bison from Ohio, and by 1881, the last black bear was killed in Paulding County, in the heart of the former Great Black Swamp, where settlers were almost finished with clearing the trees and draining the wetlands for farming.[106] The Passenger pigeon also inhabited the Great Black Swamp, but like its other populations across North America, it was hunted to extinction, with the last one dying in Ohio in 1914.
Natural resource management did not exist at all in the 19th century until rapid deforestation and industrialization in the U.S. made people in the late 1800s more aware of the dangers of exploiting the land and overexploiting forests and wildlife. The Ohio Fish Commission (established 1873) and the Ohio Forestry Bureau (established 1885) were among the first government agencies to manage Ohio's natural resources.[107] But for the Great Black Swamp, they were too late.
Over the course of less than thirty years (1859–1885), the Great Black Swamp, once teeming with countless plants and animals, was almost completely erased from the land that had slowly shaped it since the end of the Younger Dryas period about 11,700 years ago. As of 2024[update], 80% of the Great Black Swamp area has been planted with corn, soybeans, and wheat; only 0.02% of the Great Black Swamp remain as freshwater wetlands.[4]
Economic and population growth
The unique soils that were created by ancient geological processes, and that became available to farmers when they lowered the Swamp's water table with ditches, powered agricultural growth in northwest Ohio. Higher quality soils mean higher land and production values. The economic growth of agriculture in the former Great Black Swamp can be studied from late 19th and early 20th century state and federal census records, despite their significant gaps and incompleteness. A fire in 1921 destroyed many of the U.S. census archives from 1890.[108] Thankfully, population statistics can be found with the State of Ohio in their 1920 census, which records information from every decade between 1850 and 1920.[109]
The Great Black Swamp existed in what became Allen, Defiance, Fulton, Hancock, Henry, Lucas, Ottawa, Paulding, Putnam, Sandusky, Seneca, Van Wert, and Wood counties. Important economic information for these 13 counties can be found in the U.S. census from 1920, when agriculture was firmly established for more than 30 years after the Swamp was destroyed. According to the census, the 13 counties had a total of 37,961 farms, and the reported total "Value of All Crops" from those farms, excluding products from animals, was $113,532,368 (not adjusted to current rates).[110] The costs that were needed to generate that reported "Value of All Crops" is only accounted for with the reports for the cost of labor, fertilizer, and animal feed. Not included is how much the farmer spent on purchasing equipment or tools or other materials needed to make their farm produce goods and generate revenues, such as ploughs or fences or shovels. No other details are provided on the reported value of crops, such as actual revenues. Crops grown within the former Great Black Swamp in 1920, according to the Ohio census, included vegetables such as potatoes, orchard fruits such as apples and peaches, small fruits such as strawberries and raspberries, cereals such as corn and wheat and oats, and other kinds of crops like tobacco and sugar beets. Forage plants, such as alfalfa and sorghum, and hay were also cultivated. The census also reports the number of livestock animals and their total value, the value of dairy and wool and other goods, farm mortgage debts, and other important facts and figures.
The total population for the 13 Ohio counties within the former Great Black Swamp in 1920 was 675,761, which was a significant jump from the 207,922 in 1860, when settlers had spent a year beginning to turn the Swamp into agriculture since the passage of the Ohio Ditch Law in 1859.[109]
More than a hundred years later, the 2022 State census for Ohio, conducted by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), reported on the number of farms and the actual revenues from Allen, Defiance, Fulton, Hancock, Henry, Lucas, Ottawa, Paulding, Putnam, Sandusky, Seneca, Van Wert, and Wood counties in the former Swamp. In total, the 13 counties reported there were 11,348 farms, and the counties generated $2,144,563,000 in revenues from crops, excluding products from livestock and poultry. The majority of the crops were soybean, corn, and wheat.[111] In 2020, the total population of the 13 Ohio counties was 1,085,831.[112]
The Swamp also continuously stretched without interruption into Allen County in Indiana. In 1920, the census reported there were 4,221 farms in Allen County, and the reported total "Value of All Crops" from those farms, excluding products from animals, was $11,054,888 (not adjusted to current rates).[113] In 2022, the USDA census reported there were 1,497 farms and $254,903,000 in crops sold, excluding products from livestock and poultry.[114] In 1920, the total population for Allen County in Indiana was 114,303.[115] In 2020, it was 385,410.[116]
Smaller parts of the Swamp also stretched from Fulton and Lucas Counties into the southern sections of Lenawee and Monroe Counties in Michigan, with its contiguous range interrupted by mixed oak savannas in Lucas County, Ohio. Before they were destroyed, other wetlands not directly connected to the Swamp's general outline existed in the Ohio counties of Williams, Mercer, and Wyandot. The entire region of the former Swamp, across northwest Ohio and parts of Indiana and Michigan, became crisscrossed with railroads and highways, and roads running north and south and east and west, across a grid composed of square mile sections, which are made of farms and industries, towns and villages, and cities which can be seen from satellites and vehicles orbiting the Earth in outer space.
Public perception about wetlands and the environment has changed significantly in the 2020s, with increasing accountability for bias, stereotypes, and the glaring omissions of historical accounts. Public misinformation and misunderstandings about the Great Black Swamp include a 1982 WBGU-PBS documentary, which omitted many facts, portrayed the Swamp as a disease-infested place that needed to be destroyed, and described its destruction as a "heroic conquest".[117]
This Ohio wetland was restored in collaboration with a private landowner.An illustration showing how a wetland filters and transforms nutrients, such as nitrogen and phosphorus, in the water. Aquatic plants, hydric soils, bacteria, and microbes work together in the denitrification of the water.
During the second half of the 20th century, efforts were undertaken to preserve and restore portions of the swamp to its pre-settlement state (e.g. Limberlost Swamp)[120] After the excessive spread of harmful algal blooms in nearby western Lake Erie returned in 2011 and every year since then, there has been renewed interest in restoring wetlands in the drained Black Swamp area.[90]William J. Mitsch (2017)[121] called for the restoration and creation of 150sqmi (400km2) of treatment wetlands in the former Black Swamp or 10% of the former wetland, as needed to significantly reduce phosphorus inflow by 40% from the polluted Maumee River to Lake Erie.[4]
The Olentangy River Wetland Research Park is an organization dedicated to wetland science that provides research and education and advises on water resource management, and conservation and restoration projects for wetlands. The 52-acre facility includes two experimental wetland basins, an oxbow wetland, bottomland hardwood forest, and a mesocosm compound. It also has laboratories, a classroom, offices, and meeting spaces. It contributes to research on how to restore water quality and wetlands in the Maumee watershed.
The Black Swamp Conservancy, founded in 1993, has also been involved in preserving former swamplands. They currently protect 17,600 acres (7,100ha) spread throughout the Northwest Ohio region.[122] Their recent work includes the Clary Boulee McDonald Preserve, which became the Seneca County Park in 2024. The site sits next to Wolf Creek on what used to be Beech Forests surrounded by Elm-Ash Swamp Forests back in the mid-1800s. The restoration work to its floodplain and wetlands would create opportunities for wildlife corridors, and also for visitors who would use its trails.[123] The organization works with the community of local farmers that surround any restoration area, in order to have positive impacts on its neighbors.[124]
The Nature Conservancy owns and manages the Kitty Todd Nature Preserve in Lucas County in the Oak Openings Region. The Preserve is an assemblage of oak savanna and restored wetlands of about 1,400 acres, some of it contiguous and some of it separated by roads and private properties. Early settlers found the soil unfit for farming because of the sand.[125] Historically, the Oak Openings Region consisted of wind-blown sand dunes and wetlands that were wet during the winter and the spring, and then dry in the summer, making the vegetation unique and varied from wet sedge meadow to wet prairie and oak savanna.[126] The Ohio Department of Natural Resources (Ohio DNR) manages state nature preserves across the former Great Black Swamp region. They include the Campbell State Nature Preserve in Lucas County, in an area that consists of oak openings, wet sedge meadows, sand dunes, sand barrens, mesic sand prairies, and swamp forest.[127] The Irwin Prairie State Nature Preserve, also in Lucas County, is protected and managed by the State and encompasses 207 acres of Wet sedge meadow.[128]
Metroparks Toledo is another regional leader in wetland restoration, most notably through the creation of Howard Marsh Metropark. This restored wetland converted nearly 1,000 acres (400ha) of historical agricultural land into a prosperous wetland that now boasts over half of the bird species found throughout Ohio.[129]Pearson Metropark is another example of both a historic, old growth wet forest, paired with sections of restored wetlands.[130]
In 2024, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) completed a 5-year restoration of 12 acres of coastal wetlands at Port Clinton in Ottawa County. According to the land surveys from the early 1800s, the area the USACE restored used to be freshwater fens and marshes, and also elm-ash swamp forests. Upon completion of the project, the USACE stated in an article that, “Wetlands are essential to the health of our Great Lakes”.[131]
Preventing pollution
Landsat 8 captured this image of Lake Erie during a harmful algal bloom event on September 26, 2017, at the mouth of the Maumee River next to Toledo. The algal bloom was caused by excessive nutrient pollution in the Maumee River watershed, mostly from agriculture.
In 2014, toxic cyanobacteria impacted the water quality so severely that the water supply for the city of Toledo was shut off, affecting hundreds of thousands of residents.[4] The destruction of the Great Black Swamp, that filtered runoff before it entered the lake, contributed to the harmful algae blooms and the eutrophication of Lake Erie.[132]
In 2019, Gov. Mike DeWine established a statewide water quality initiative, called H2Ohio, to help control and prevent algal blooms in Lake Erie by working with farmers to reduce nutrient pollution and improve the health of waterways. The program supports the implementation of projects such as two-stage ditches, which help filter the water from nutrient pollution by expanding existing ditches to create vegetation benches. These benches absorb nutrients from farm runoff, slow water flow, provide bank stabilization, reduce maintenance costs, and help prevent algal blooms in Lake Erie.[133] In 2023, the Ohio Department of Agriculture awarded $4.2 million in grants for twelve two-stage ditch projects.[134] Vegetation benches are built below the outlets of the tile drains that remove water from the farms. H2Ohio also supports and funds the restoration of wetlands where possible.[135] In 2025, the Ohio House and Senate proposed more than $120 millon in cuts to H2Ohio over the course of two years, which would reduce H2Ohio's budget by 45% and potentially undo years of important progress in improving water quality.[136] Gov. DeWine signed the House Budget bill with the proposed cuts in July 2025.[137]
Total Phosphorus (TP) loads from Lake Erie watersheds (2009–2019). This map shows a bar chart to the left which measures the total phosphorus by Metric Tons Annually (MTA). Image credit: Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (Ohio EPA), November 2022.
In 2022, the Ohio EPA published a report, based on years of water quality testing and research and analysis, stating that the Maumee watershed contributes the most phosphorus pollution to Lake Erie.[138] The Great Black Swamp consisted of the Maumee River watershed, and also the Ottawa River, Cedar-Toussaint Complex, Portage River, and Sandusky River watersheds. Combined, all five watersheds produce most of the nutrient pollution and eject it into the Western Basin of Lake Erie. Row crop production of corn, soy, and wheat uses fertilizers with phosphorus, nitrogen, and potassium in the farm soil from both commercial sources (such as chemically refined minerals such as superphosphate, monoammonium phosphate, and diammonium phosphate) and organic sources (such as manure, composts, and biosolids). Nutrient pollution from cattle and animal hog units and concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), legacy phosphorus, and non-agricultural stormwater are also recognized in the report as pollution sources. The report aimed to help develop strategies to identify where to best apply nutrient pollution controls in a cost-effective manner.
Reduced gains from phosphorus management can compound efforts to improve and restore water quality in the Maumee River watershed (the former Great Black Swamp). Conservation tillage practices, such as no-till and ridge-till, aim to minimize soil disturbance, improve soil health and reduce erosion by covering 30% of the soil with crop residues after planting.[139] However, such practices may increase the dissolved phosphorus in the farm runoff entering ditches and streams, which can worsen when manure is applied to the soil.[140] These new sources of phosphorus have been found in the former Great Black Swamp/Maumee watershed to combine with "legacy phosphorus" (older phosphorus deposits stored in the banks of ditches and streams from previous years), which can further complicate restoration efforts unless new methods of controlling stream bank erosion are practiced.[141] The growth of swine production and also CAFOs in the former Swamp region greatly contribute to nutrient pollution and require serious manure and fertilizer management.[142] Destroying the Swamp and all of its nutrient-absorbing vegetation (trees, shrubs, and aquatic plants), and then replacing it completely with agriculture did not just shut down the ecosystem's ability to control nutrients in the water. It also created brand new sources of nutrients for which the currently disabled ecosystem simply cannot cope with.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) assist farmers in preventing nutrient pollution by restoring wetlands on farms through voluntary programs.[143] Other voluntary nutrient pollution control programs include denitrifying bioreactors and drainage water management, also known as controlled tile drainage.[144] Controlled tile drainage manages the drainage volume and water table elevation by regulating the flow from a surface or subsurface farm draining system.[145] Without interference from harmful environmental land uses, this drainage method can significantly reduce growing season fluxes of stream water ammonium nitrogen, nitrate nitrogen, dissolved reactive phosphorus, and phosphorus.[146]
The Ohio Department of Natural Resources (Ohio DNR), along with the USDA and NRCS, assists farmers with windbreaks and other soil conservation methods to help prevent wind erosion of the farm soil, which in turn helps improve water quality in streams.[147] Both agricultural government agencies and farming communities work to mitigate the loss of productive soil, recognizing that 1 ton of optimal soil contains 2 pounds of nitrogen, 9 pounds of phosphorus, and 31 pounds of potassium, and that each ton of soil lost is a negative financial impact on farms.[148]
A 2013 study analyzed the perspectives of farmers in the Maumee River watershed concerning phosphorus control and algal blooms in Lake Erie. It noted how nutrient pollution control in Ohio is voluntary (not mandatory) for farmers. The study analyzed as many perspectives as possible from the farmers, including how they perceive nutrient control measures, the financial and personal risks they take in running a farm, and how they often have to prioritize "economic over environmental risk".[152] In June 2025, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) selected the Ohio Department of Agriculture for a $1 million grant to provide technical assistance on 300,000 acres of farmland within the former Great Black Swamp region to reduce an estimated 10,000 pounds of total phosphorus from entering the Maumee River watershed.[153]
Due to the loss of habitat, biodiversity has suffered significantly since the conversion of the Great Black Swamp into agriculture. Species that are threatened with extinction include the Spotted turtle, which has declined significantly over the years, but is receiving serious protection.[154]The Copperbelly Water Snake is another species that has suffered significant population losses in the former Great Black Swamp region. Today, this species inhabits just 50km2 (20 sq miles) of remnant swamp forest in Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana, with experts estimating that between 40 and a 100 individuals remain.[155] The Piping plover, the Loggerhead shrike, and the Northern harrier are other species that need protection, and are considered Endangered in Ohio.[156]
Black bears were extirpated in most of Ohio by the 1850s, and the last one was killed in the Great Black Swamp by 1881, in Paulding County. They were discovered in the State in the 1970s, having entered from Pennsylvania and West Virginia, and since then, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) has been conducting surveys on their population, which numbers between 50 and 100 bears. While almost all of the black bear sightings in the State occur along the borders with Pennsylvania and West Virginia, only 4 sightings were made between 1993 and 2022 in the former Great Black Swamp region, in Fulton and Seneca Counties.[157] The ODNR lists the black bear as an Endangered Species in Ohio and makes it illegal to hunt them.
The Sandhill crane was extirpated in Ohio by the early 20th century, but has slowly made a comeback across the State. Most recently, the Ohio DNR, the International Crane Foundation, and the Ohio Bird Conservation Initiative counted 184 Sandhill cranes across 4 counties in the former Great Black Swamp region (Fulton, Lucas, Ottawa, and Sandusky) in 2023 and 2024 during the nesting season.[158] They are listed as Threatened by the Ohio DNR and receive protection in the State.[159] Hunting and habitat loss killed most of the Whooping crane population in North America by the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Whooping crane was thought to have been a resident of the Great Black Swamp region, especially since it still uses the Mississippi Flyway to this day. Despite the Ohio Bird Records Committee believing that the species deserved inclusion on the official Ohio list of historic bird species, its historic presence cannot be confirmed because of poor record keeping practices in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which included losing and/or destroying written and photographic documentation, crane skins, and even cranes that had been stuffed by taxidermists.[160] Whooping cranes are rarely sighted, either in the former Swamp region or the rest of Ohio.[161]
Legacy of the Swamp
The loss of wetlands such as the Great Black Swamp motivate current wetland conservation movements across the United States and around the world. In June 2025, the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia, and its 402,000 acre refuge, were saved from a proposed mine for titanium dioxide and other minerals, located three miles away on Trail Ridge, when a conservation group purchased the land that would have been used for the mine for $60 million, effectively ending the mining project.[162] Challenges to the mine included the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 2022, when it reversed its approval for the mine because the company that wanted to build it did not properly consult about their project with the Muscogee (Creek) Nation.[163] The Muscogee used to call the Okefenokee region home before the Indian Removal Act, and the name "Okefenokee" is from their own language, meaning "shaking waters in a low place".[164]
Recent legal challenges create obstacles for wetland protection in the U.S., often when it involves a person's right on how to use the land they own, such as in the 2023 Supreme Court ruling in "Sackett v. EPA". In March 2025, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) released a report discussing the damage the Supreme Court ruling on "Sackett v EPA" has done to wetlands, and how it threatens to remove protections for existing wetlands in the U.S. The report states that tens of millions of acres of wetlands are now vulnerable to pollution and destruction following the ruling.[165]
In other countries, wetlands like the former Great Black Swamp face the threat of development. They include the Congo Peatlands in the Cuvette Centrale, which are the largest tropical peatlands in the world and cover 16.7 million hectares (or over 41 million acres).[166] The Peatlands store 30 billion metric tonnes of carbon in the peat.[167] In 2025, the government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo launched bids for the rights to drill for oil and gas in its country, including within the Congo Peatlands.[168] A growing logging industry, some of it illegal and financed by entrepreneurs in other countries, also threatens to destroy the biodiversity of the Peatlands, and complicate the lives of the peoples who have inhabited the region, and have called it home, for countless centuries.[169]
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Further reading
Out of the Wilderness, History of the Central Mennonite Church," 1835–1960. O. Grieser and E. Beck, The Dean Hicks Company, Grand Rapids Michigan, 1960.
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