Great Black Swamp
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The Great Black Swamp (or Black Swamp) was a glacially fed wetland in northwest Ohio, northeast Indiana, and southeast Michigan that existed from the end of the Wisconsin glaciation until the late 19th century. Comprising extensive swamps and marshes interspersed with drier ground, it occupied what was formerly the southwestern part of proglacial Lake Maumee, a precursor to Lake Erie.
The Ohio Department of Natural Resources stated the forested swamps covered 3,072,000 acres (1,243,194 ha) and the Lake Erie marshes covered 300,000 acres (121,400 ha).<ref name="Fretwell, Judy; Williams, John D.; Redman, Philip.">Fretwell, Judy; Williams, John D.; Redman, Philip. "National Water Summary on Wetland Resources, USGS Water Supply Paper 2425". U.S. Dept. of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey, 1996, p. 22.</ref> Other estimates claim the swamp’s wetlands covered Template:Convert; or Template:Convert.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="Jiang-2024">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Atwater, Caleb, 1778-1867. "War with Great Britain". A History of the State of Ohio, Natural And Civil, 2nd edition. Cincinnati: Stereotyped by Glezen & Shepard, 1838, p. 214.</ref>
The swamp was drained between 1859 and 1885 to become highly productive farmland, but its agricultural runoff has degraded the environment.<ref name="Fretwell, Judy; Williams, John D.; Redman, Philip."/><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> This causes frequent harmful algal blooms in Lake Erie.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
According to 19th-century land surveys and current Geographic Information System (GIS) presettlement vegetation maps, the swamp existed within the Maumee, Ottawa, Portage, and Sandusky watersheds, and in the River Raisin's southern headwaters.<ref name="arcgis.com">Various authors. "Original Natural Vegetation of Ohio" GIS interactive map. The Natural Vegetation of Ohio, at the Time of the Earliest Land Surveys by Robert B. Gordon, Ohio Biological Survey, 1966. ArcGIS map updated April 3, 2019.</ref><ref name="mnfi.anr.msu.edu">Various authors. "Michigan Natural Features Inventory Vegetation circa 1800" GIS interactive map. Michigan State University, MSU extension.</ref><ref name="indianamap-inmap.hub.arcgis.com">INDIANAMAP-INMAP.HUB.ARCGIS.COM. "Presettlement Land Cover IDNR 2016". Indiana Geographic Information Office, Indiana State Government, WEB: last updated December 18, 2024.</ref> Its boundary was determined by ancient sandy beach ridges formed on proglacial lake shores, after glacial retreat thousands of years ago. It extended from Fort Wayne, Indiana to the Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge along the Lake Erie shore.<ref>The Great Black Swamp Template:Webarchive, Black Swamp Conservancy</ref>
The vast swamp was a mosaic of deciduous forests, wetlands, and prairies shaped by terrain and drainage. Lower elevations hosted swamps, with species such as ash, elm, cottonwood and sycamore. Marshes, fens, wet meadows, and wet prairies were also present, especially along the Lake Erie shoreline east of Toledo. Slightly higher elevations hosted mesic species such as beech, maples, basswood, and tuliptree. Dry ridges (moraines) hosted xeric species, like oak and hickory.
Current wetlands such as the Okefenokee Swamp, the Great Dismal Swamp, the Atchafalaya Swamp, and the Everglades suggest the importance of the biodiversity within the ecosystems of the former Great Black Swamp region. Species once common within and around the swamp are now listed by Ohio as threatened, endangered, or extinct.<ref>Ohio DNR. State Listed Species. Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources, Publication 5356(R0924), September 2024.</ref>
The Great Black Swamp's history exemplifies how Indigenous peoples were forcibly removed and ecosystems destroyed for development. In recent years, attention has grown to the history of the swamp and other destroyed environments, including California's Tulare Lake, contributing to important policies on wetland conservation (American and international), natural resource management, wildlife conservation, and global efforts to prevent forced Indigenous removal, pollution, environmental disasters, ecosystem collapse, and extinction.
History of the swamp
Geologic and biologic past
The Laurentide ice sheet covered northeast Indiana, northwest Ohio, and southeast Michigan during the Last Glacial Period, reaching estimated heights of 300–500 meters (984–1,640 feet) near the Great Lakes and up to two miles elsewhere.<ref>Gowan, Evan J. et al."A new global ice sheet reconstruction for the past 80,000 years" . Nature Communications, 12, Article number: 1199(2021).</ref> Following its gradual retreat about 24,000 years ago, it left behind Lake Maumee. The Maumee Torrent drained the lake catastrophically 14,000–17,000 years Before Present (BP). The ice sheet and mega-flood dramatically shaped the regional landscape, effects now visible in Lidar-based DEM imagery.
After the Maumee mega-flood around 14,000 years BP, the region developed the following proglacial lakes as water levels dropped: Arkona (13,800–13,600 BP); Ypsilanti (13,600–13,000 BP); Whittlesey (13,000–12,800 BP); Warren and Wayne (12,800–12,500 BP); Grassmere and Lundy (12,500–12,400 BP); Early and Middle Lake Erie (12,400–4,000 BP); and Modern Lake Erie (4,000 BP to the present).<ref>Herdendorf, Charles E.; Klarer, David M.; Herdendorf, Ricki C. "The Ecology of Old Woman Creek, Ohio: An Estuarine and Watershed Profile (Ch. 2: Geology)". Ohio Department of Natural Resources, 2006, pp. 31–44 Template:ISBN.</ref> Isosatic rebound (an uplift of the Earth's crust from the ice sheet's removal) occurred 9,000 to 4,000 BP, which impacted water flow. Drainage initially flowed west during the highest lake stages (up to 220 feet/67 M above current levels), then shifted east, and eventually established Lake Erie's present outline.<ref>Wright, H. E., Jr., and D. G. Frey, editors. The Quaternary of the United States. Princeton University Press, 1965, pp. 76, 89–90.</ref>
The Great Black Swamp formed on the former proglacial lake beds of northwest Ohio's Huron-Erie Lake Plain (including the Maumee Lake Plains, Paulding Plains, Marblehead Drift/Limestone Plains, and the Oak Openings).<ref>Woods, A.J. et al. "Ecoregions of Indiana and Ohio". U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Geological Survey, WEB: last updated May 27, 2025.</ref> This lacustrine plain, covered in clay-rich till (15,000–13,000 BP), rests on dark Devonian bedrock and shale. Limestone, with 20–80 feet (6–24 meters) of till, covers the south side of the Maumee River, while 90 feet (27 meters) of glacial drift covers shale to the north.<ref>Walker, Alfred C. "Maumee River Basin (Middle Portion) Underground Water Resources". Ohio Water Plan Inventory, Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Division of Water, 1959.</ref> Aeolian sand dunes were deposited across the plain. The water-retaining clay, till, lacustrine sands over diamicton, and organic soil, along with ice-created "kettle holes", allowed the swamp to accumulate peat and decayed vegetation.<ref>Slocum, M.D., Charles E. History of the Maumee River Basin: From Its Earliest Account To Its Organization Into Counties. Indianapolis, Toledo: Bowen & Slocum, 1905, p. 39</ref> One study determined the preceding glacial lake had a chain of islands, not a traditional beach, when it examined lake level changes before the Bølling-Allerød Interstadial (14,690–12,890 BP).<ref>Fisher, T., Blockland, J., Anderson, B., Krantz, D., Stierman, D. & Goble, R."Evidence of Sequence and Age of Ancestral Lake Erie Lake-Levels, Northwest Ohio". The Ohio Journal of Science, 115(2), 2015, 62–78.</ref> This period is associated with meltwater pulse 1A, when global sea-levels rose 16–25 meters (52–82 feet).
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".<ref>Killey, Myrna M. "Illinois' Ice Age Legacy". Geoscience Education Series 14, Illinois Department of Natural Resources, Illinois State Geological Survey, 2007, p. 17.</ref> One account from the early 19th century noted the glacial alluvium of the lake plain, and described the streams as "sluggish in their motions, their bed having little inclination".<ref>Darby, W. A Tour from the City of New York, to Detroit, in the Michigan Territory.... New York: Kirk and Mercein, 1819, p. 183.</ref> The average slope of the land was about 4 feet (1.2 M) per mile.<ref>Kaatz, Martin. "The Settlement of the Black Swamp of Northwestern Ohio (Part II)". Northwest Ohio Quarterly, Vol. XXV, No. 3, 1953, p. 146.</ref> Water saturated the land flattened for tens of thousands of years under the weight of the ice sheet.
Moraines contained the water of the swamp, which slowly flowed in braided and meandering patterns out into the Maumee, Ottawa, Sandusky, Raisin, and Portage Rivers towards Lake Erie. The swamp's environments evolved into rich biodiverse ecosystems, consisting of forested swamps, shrub swamps, emergent marshes, alkaline fens, sphagnum bogs, vernal pools, mixed oak forests, Northern hardwood forests, oak savannas, wet meadows, and prairie grasslands. The Huron-Erie Lake Plain (or Lacustrine Plain) gave rise to freshwater Palustrine wetlands, located near lake shores, river channels, floodplains, isolated catchments, and slopes.<ref>Cowardin, Lewis M. "Classification of Wetlands and Deepwater Habitats of the United States". Office of Biological Services, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, December 1979, pp. 12–15</ref><ref>Reeder Brian C. and Wendy R. Eisner. "Holocene Biogeochemical and Pollen History of a Lake Erie, Ohio, Coastal Wetland". Ohio Journal of Science 94, no. 4 (Sept. 1994): 87–93.</ref>
Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene animals living around Lake Maumee and the early formations of the swamp included giant short-faced bears and giant beavers. A Dire wolf tooth fossil, dated 11,000–12,000 BP, was found east of the former Swamp region in Sheriden Cave, and was later used to study the DNA of the species.<ref>Perri, Angela R et al. "Dire wolves were the last of an ancient New World canid lineage". Nature, vol. 591,7848 (2021): 87–91.</ref>
In 1998, an 80% complete male mastodon fossil skeleton was discovered in Fort Wayne, Indiana, just west of the former Great Black Swamp, and was named "Fred" by the family who found it buried beneath their peat farm.<ref>KPCNEWS.COM. "Fred the Mastodon unveiled". KPC News, WEB: February 28, 2013.</ref> Scientists determined the mastodon's body sank into wetland soils about 13,000 years BP, which helped preserve it because of its low-oxygen environment. They concluded the male mastodon had died from a fatal battle with another male, and that its location of death was likely used by other mastodons for mating grounds.<ref>Miller, J.H; Fisher, D.C; Crowley, B.E; Secord, R.; Konomi, B.A. "Male mastodon landscape use changed with maturation (late Pleistocene, North America)". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A. (PNAS), June 13, 2022, 119 (25) e2118329119.</ref> Scientists studied the bones for oxygen and strontium levels to determine how the animal used the landscape.<ref>McNamee, Kai. "The story of Fred the mastodon, who died looking for love". National Public Radio (NPR), WEB: July 7, 2022.</ref> They concluded from chemical signatures in the tusks that the mastodon's diet consisted of conifers such as spruce, which were abundant in the swamp region during the Late Pleistocene.<ref>Tarlach, Gemma. "The Intriguing Life, Death, and Afterlife of an Indiana Mastodon". Atlas Obscura, WEB: June 14, 2022.</ref>
Till plains did not have conifer swamps and conifer forests since the early Holocene, thousands of years after the glacial retreat.<ref>Lothrop, J. C.; Lowery, D. L.; Spiess, A. E.; Ellis, C. J. "Early Human Settlement of Northeastern North America (2.3.2 Eastern Great Lakes and Ohio Valley)". PaleoAmerica, vol. 2, no. 3, 2016, pp. 192–251.</ref><ref>Swisher, S; Peck, J. "Vegetation Changes Associated with the Younger Dryas from the Sediments of Silver Lake, Summit County, Ohio, USA", The Ohio Journal of Science, vol. 120, no. 2, 2020, pp. 30–38.</ref><ref>Delcourt, Paul A.; Delcourt, Hazel R. "Paleoclimates, Paleovegetation, and Paleofloras of North America North of Mexico During the Late Quaternary". Flora of North America North of Mexico, Vol. 1 (Introduction), edited by Flora of North America Editorial Committee, New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993, pp. 71–82, 92–94.</ref> Pollen evidence from the Ohio and Indiana till plains suggests the climate warmed from a boreal climate to a temperate climate about 11,000 BP.<ref>Shane, Linda C.K.; Anderson, Katherine H. "Intensity, gradients and reversals in late glacial environmental change in east-central north America". Quaternary Science Reviews, vol. 12, no. 5, 1993, pp. 307–314.</ref><ref>Shane, L. C. K. "Intensity and rate of vegetational and climatic changes in the Ohio region between 14,000 and 9,000 14C yr B.P.", In: W. S. Dancey (ed.), The First Discovery of America: Archaeological Evidence of the Early Inhabitants of the Ohio Area, Ohio Archaeological Council, Columbus, OH, 1994, p. 7-21.</ref> The swamp region transformed from postglacial vegetation and open spruce forest-tundra into a temperate deciduous forest, with deciduous trees supplanting conifer trees in the till plains by 9,800 BP, and with open oak woodlands developing 8,000–4,000 BP.<ref>Shane, L. C. K. "Late-glacial vegetational and climatic history of the Allegheny Plateau and the till plain of Ohio and Indiana". Boreas: An International Journal of Quaternary Research, 1987, 16:1–20.</ref><ref>Herdendorf, Charles E.; Klarer, David M.; Herdendorf, Ricki C. "The Ecology of Old Woman Creek, Ohio: An Estuarine and Watershed Profile (Ch. 8: Archaeology)". Ohio Department of Natural Resources, 2006, pp. 1–4, Template:ISBN.</ref> The 8.2 kiloyear event, which was a rapid drop in global cooling temperatures, induced two phases of wind-blown loess deposition across the swamp and Ohio 8,950 to 8,005 calibrated years BP.<ref>Lutz, Brian; Wiles, Gregory; Lowell, Thomas; Michaels, Joshua. "The 8.2-Ka Abrupt Climate Change Event in Brown's Lake, Northeast Ohio". Quaternary Research, Vol. 67, no. 2 (2007): 292–96.</ref>
Hardwood swamps occurred in poorly drained depressions, glacial outwash plains and channels, end moraines, perched dunes, and till plains. Historic soils were similar to today: acidic to alkaline loam (with silt, sand, or clay) and muck. Minerotrophic swamps and marshes existed with ombrotrophic peatlands. Pit-and-mound topography allowed for very diverse forests and wetlands to flourish, with surface water and groundwater dynamics (often altered by beaver dams) influencing the different cycles of matter and diversity of trees, shrubs, flowering, and aquatic/emergent plants.<ref>Cohen, J.G. et al. "Michigan Natural Community Classification (web application)". Michigan Natural Features Inventory, Michigan State University Extension, Lansing, Michigan, WEB: 2020.</ref><ref>Slaughter, B.S. 2009. "Natural community abstract for southern hardwood swamp". Michigan Natural Features Inventory, Lansing, MI., June 2010</ref>
Indigenous peoples and the early United States
Evidence in northern Ohio of the first Indigenous peoples, known as Paleo-Indians, date to around 11,000 years Before Present (BP), according to studies of the Paleo Crossing Site and Nobles Pond Site. Evidence from 11,000–12,000 BP of early humans was found at Sheriden Cave, east of the former Great Black Swamp, and included Clovis culture artifacts.<ref>Lothrop, J. C.; Lowery, D. L.; Spiess, A. E.; Ellis, C. J. "Early Human Settlement of Northeastern North America (3.2 Early Paleoindian circa 13,000–12,200 cal yr BP)". PaleoAmerica, vol. 2, no. 3, 2016, pp. 192–251.</ref> A 2012 study suggests humans existed in northern Ohio 13,738 to 13,435 calibrated years BP, based on the discovery of stone-tool cut marks on the bones of a Jefferson's ground sloth, which were found in a bog in the Huron River headwaters, east of the former swamp.<ref>Redmond, B. G., McDonald, H. G., Greenfield, H. J., & Burr, M. L. "New evidence for Late Pleistocene human exploitation of Jefferson's Ground Sloth (Megalonyx jeffersonii) from northern Ohio, USA". World Archaeology, 44(1), 2012, pp. 75–101, "DOI:10.1080/00438243.2012.647576".</ref>
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 (10,000 BP) through the Woodland period (3,000–1,000 BP), and through first contact with Europeans, in what became known as Ohio Country, from the mid-17th century and into the centuries after.<ref>Stothers, David M.; Abel, Timothy J. "VANISHED BENEATH THE WAVES: THE LOST HISTORY AND PREHISTORY OF SOUTHWESTERN LAKE ERIE COASTAL MARSHES". Archaeology of Eastern North America, vol. 29, 2001, pp. 19–46.</ref>
The nations in the Great Black Swamp region were part of the Indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands. Common languages included Algonquian and Iroquoian.<ref>Stothers, David; Tucker, Patrick. The Fry Site: Archaeological and Ethnohistorical Perspecctives on the Maumee River Ottawa of Northwest Ohio. University of Toledo Laboratory of Archaeology, LuLu Press Inc., 2006, p. 13.</ref> The people managed their lands around the swamp during the wet and dry seasons. Villages would migrate with seasonal changes and when new food sources were needed.<ref>Gordon, Jeffrey. "Aboriginal Cultures and Landscapes". A Geography of Ohio, edited by Leonard Peacefull, Kent State University Press, 1996, p. 68.</ref> 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.
One archaeological study offers insight into both Indigenous life and the historical ecosystems of the Great Black Swamp's wetlands. It stated how Indigenous people harvested wild rice (Zizania palustris), a species that indicates healthy, biodiverse freshwater marshes.<ref>Herdendorf, Charles E.; Klarer, David M.; Herdendorf, Ricki C. The Ecology of Old Woman Creek, Ohio: An Estuarine and Watershed Profile (Ch. 8: Archaeology). Ohio Department of Natural Resources, 2006, pp. 7–8, Template:ISBN.</ref> Wild rice is sensitive to environmental changes, making it a key indicator of water quality and ecosystem health.<ref>Smith, Kathleen. "Manoomin/Wild Rice: The ecology and importance of a wetland treasure". Wisconsin Wetlands Association (News), WEB: July 1, 2025.</ref> It provides habitat and a protein, mineral, and fiber-rich diet for wildlife like deer, rabbits, muskrats, and ducks.<ref>Podas, Mari. "Wild Rice, a Keystone Species to Minnesota Ecosystems". Wildlife Watch, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, WEB: 2025.</ref>
Studies of animal remains in Indigenous refuse pits (middens) reveal they hunted game in the Sandusky Bay section of the swamp, including muskrats, ducks, frogs, turtles, and fish such as freshwater drum, longnose gar, yellow bullhead, and bluegill.<ref>Herdendorf, Charles E.; Klarer, David M.; Herdendorf, Ricki C. The Ecology of Old Woman Creek, Ohio: An Estuarine and Watershed Profile (Ch. 8: Archaeology). Ohio Department of Natural Resources, 2006, p. 8, Template:ISBN.</ref> They also used wetland plants like cattail and bulrush, as well as inner tree bark, for making baskets, mats, utensils, and other textiles.
Archaeologists studied evidence of Indigenous peoples in the swamp, found buried near the Maumee River in Allen County, Indiana. They analyzed ceramic pottery; projectile points; stone tools; corn; animal bone; mussel shells; and charcoal from firewood, which originated from beech, ash, hickory, elm, walnut, maple, and white oak.<ref>Hipskind, Scott. "Investigations at 12-AL-505, A Western Basin Tradition Site Along the Maumee River in Allen County, Indiana", in Indiana Archaeology, Vol. 5, No. 1, 2010, edited by J.R. Jones III, et al., Division of Historic Preservation and Archaeology, Indiana Department of Natural Resources, pp. 49–69.</ref> Analysis found the evidence was deposited between 1150 and 1430 AD. A different archaeological site was studied near the Maumee River in Lucas County, Ohio. Scientists analyzed its evidence of a late 18th to early 19th century Ottawa burial, which contained: trade goods; a shelter; an animal enclosure; indigenous and European artifacts such as trade silver; and dietary evidence such as corn, fish, reptiles, and mollusks.<ref>Stothers, David; Tucker, Patrick. The Fry Site: Archaeological and Ethnohistorical Perspecctives on the Maumee River Ottawa of Northwest Ohio. University of Toledo Laboratory of Archaeology, LuLu Press Inc., 2006, p. xiii.</ref>
After the reintroduction of horses in the United States, Indigenous peoples used horses to traverse almost any terrain. Another mode of transport were dugout canoes, measuring Template:Convert long, which they used to travel across lakes and rivers for miles.<ref>McClure, Isobel. "Research reveals dugout canoes may be one of region's oldest artifacts". The Toledo Blade, July 11, 2025.</ref>
Indigenous people built large, sophisticated birchbark canoes that could transport many people and heavy goods. Construction was a process of precise planning, resulting in highly resilient vessels. One 1750s account by frontiersman James Smith described a canoe that was 35 feet (10.7 M) long, 4 feet (1.2 M) wide, and 3 feet (0.9 M) deep.<ref>Smith, James, 1737–1812, and Darlington, W. M. (William McCullough). An Account of the Remarkable Occurrences In the Life And Travels of Col. James Smith: During His Captivity With the Indians, In the Years 1755, '56, '57, '58, & '59. Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co., 1870, p. 27.</ref> Fur trader records referred to such large vessels as a "6-fathom gunwale length."<ref>Adney, E.T.; Chapelle, H.I. The Birch Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America. United States National Museum, Museum of History and Technology, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 1964, pp. 135–143.</ref> It was built with birch bark over a light wooden frame, often made of white birch, elm, hickory, chestnut, basswood, and cottonwood from the swamp. The frame gave the canoe longitudinal strength to achieve high speeds, even when fully loaded. Birch bark was preferred for the boat's skin because it could be easily sewn together with tree roots. Stone axes (made of flint, jasper, and quartz) were used to fell trees. Stone tools were used for woodworking until European metal tools were introduced. Different models were used for specific bodies of water, from calm lakes to fast-moving rivers.<ref>Adney, E.T.; Chapelle, H.I. The Birch Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America. United States National Museum, Museum of History and Technology, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 1964, pp. 27–37.</ref> According to Smithsonian historians Edwin Adney and Howard Chapelle, the canoes' advanced design and engineering skills showed "a long period of development must have taken place" before European contact.<ref>Adney, E.T.; Chapelle, H.I. The Birch Bark Canoes and Skin Boats of North America. United States National Museum, Museum of History and Technology, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 1964, pp. 1–20.</ref>
The Anishinaabe and Ojibwe (Chippewa) utilized birch bark for many purposes, including creating scrolls (wiigwaasabak) for written stories, songs, rituals, healing recipes, maps, and artwork. A stylus of bone or wood was used to etch markings, which were then rubbed with charcoal.<ref>Daly, D.R. "Ojibwe Birch Bark Certificate". National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, WEB: November 29, 2021.</ref> Birch bark was also crafted into boxes (wiigwaasi-makak) to store items, including food, thanks to the wood's preservative compound, betulin. The wood's suberin offered waterproof protection for items and food, and even canoes.<ref>Kata, Sonia. "Embellishing birchbark: All bark, and some bite". McCord Stewart Museum Montreal, WEB: May 26, 2022.</ref> The Indigenous peoples harvested the bark without fatally injuring the trees.<ref>Emery, Marla R. Emery; Wrobel, Alexandra; Hansen, Mark H.; Dockry, Michael; Moser, W. Keith Moser; Stark, Jason; Gilbert, Jonathan H. "Using Traditional Ecological Knowledge as a Basis for Targeted Forest Inventories: Paper Birch (Betula papyrifera) in the US Great Lakes Region". Journal of Forestry, Volume 112, Issue 2, March 2014, Pages 207–214, https://doi.org/10.5849/jof.13-023.</ref> They respected the life-giving abilities of the swamp, which was called Waabashkiki in the Ojibwe language.<ref>OJIBWE.LIB.UMN.EDU. "Waabashkiki". The Ojibwe People's Dictionary, University of Minnesota, WEB: 2021.</ref>
Anishinaabe peoples inhabited the land adjacent to the swamp for generations.<ref name="Mize-2024">Template:Cite journal</ref> Villages bordered the area, including those of the Miami along the Maumee-Wabash portage, and the Great Miami and Little Miami Rivers. The swamp served as a regionally divided trapping ground for many Ohio River valley settlements.<ref name="Sleeper-Smith-2018" /> Notably, it became home to the largest Shawnee settlement in future Ohio: Lower Shawneetown, established in the 1730s.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name="Sleeper-Smith-2018" />
The Wyandot (Wyandotte or Wendat) established villages at the mouths of the Maumee and Sandusky Rivers, placing them inside the Great Black Swamp's borders, and along the Scioto River River, reaching the Ohio River.<ref name ="Mancke, Elizabeth 2018">Mancke, Elizabeth. "The Ohio Country and Indigenous Geopolitics in Early Modern North America, circa 1500–1760" Ohio Valley History (WEB: Project MUSE), vol. 18, no. 1, 2018, p. 15-21.</ref><ref name="Sleeper-Smith-2018">Template:Cite journal</ref> After past wars with the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois), the Wyandot lived in peace and equality with the Delaware and Shawnee. Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, these groups jointly contended with the French colonialists and British colonialists who threatened their autonomy.<ref name ="Mancke, Elizabeth 2018"/>
The North American fur trade, the Beaver Wars, the French and Indian War, the American Revolutionary War, and the Northwest Indian War dramatically altered relations between the Indigenous peoples of the Great Black Swamp region and the Europeans and Americans.<ref>Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society. Ohio Archaeological And Historical Publications, Vol. 2. Columbus: Published for the Society by F.J. Heer, 1888–1889, p. 164.</ref> These events foreshadowed the forced Indigenous removals from historic lands, which historians today debate as either ethnic cleansing or genocide.<ref>Jacoby, Karl. "The Bloody Ground: Nineteenth-Century Frontier Genocides in the United States", in The Cambridge World History of Genocide, ed. by Ned Blackhawk, Ben Kiernan, Benjamin Madley, and Rebe Taylor, The Cambridge World History of Genocide (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023), pp. 383–411.</ref><ref>Madley, Benjamin. "Reexamining the American Genocide Debate: Meaning, Historiography, and New Methods". The American Historical Review, vol. 120, no. 1, 2015, pp. 98–139.</ref><ref>Whitt, Laurelyn; Clarke, Alan W. "North American Genocides". North American Genocides: Indigenous Nations, Settler Colonialism, and International Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019, pp. i–ii.</ref><ref>Irujo, Xavier. "Genocide, kill the Indian and save the man". Nevada Today, University of Nevada, Reno, WEB: October 8, 2021.</ref>
Indigenous assimilation, removals, and treaties for the swamp
The establishment of the Northwest Territory in 1787 by the U.S. Congress initiated major changes for northwest Ohio's Indigenous peoples and the Great Black Swamp. Following the 1794 Battle of Fallen Timbers and the end of the Northwest Indian War, the 1795 Treaty of Greenville reserved the entire region, including the swamp, for Indigenous control.<ref>Kappler, Charles J., compiler and editor. "Treaty with the Wyandot, Etc., 1795". Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, Vol. 2 (Treaties), Washington, D.C.: The Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, 1904, pp. 39–45.</ref><ref>Royce, Charles C., compiler. "Schedule of Indian Land Cessions (Cessions 15, 18, 20)". Indian Land Cessions in the United States, Eighteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1896–'97, J.W. Powell, Director. Washington, D.C., 1899, pp. 654–655.</ref> However, the U.S. government systematically took these lands, including the Great Black Swamp, for sale to white settlers through a series of subsequent treaties (1807–1833). The Treaty of Detroit (1807) took the swamp from the Maumee River to southeast Michigan.<ref>Kappler, Charles J., compiler and editor. "Treaty with the Ottawa, Etc., 1807". Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, Vol. 2 (Treaties), Washington, D.C.: The Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, 1904, pp. 92–95.</ref><ref>Royce, Charles C., compiler. "Schedule of Indian Land Cessions (Cession 66)". Indian Land Cessions in the United States, Eighteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1896–'97, J.W. Powell, Director. Washington, D.C., 1899, pp. 674–675.</ref> The Treaty of Brownstown (1808) took a narrow tract of the swamp from Perrysburg to Bellevue to build the Maumee Road Lands.<ref>Kappler, Charles J., compiler and editor. "Treaty with the Chippewa, Etc., 1808". Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, Vol. 2 (Treaties), Washington, D.C.: The Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, 1904, pp. 99–100.</ref><ref>Royce, Charles C., compiler. "Schedule of Indian Land Cessions (Cession 70)". Indian Land Cessions in the United States, Eighteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1896–'97, J.W. Powell, Director. Washington, D.C., 1899, pp. 676–677.</ref><ref>Evers-Ross, C.W.; Oblinger, F.J. "Worst of All Roads: Graphic Description of the Maumee and Western Reserve Road". Reminiscences of pioneer days in Wood County and the Maumee Valley: a pioneer scrap book. Bowling Green, Ohio: s.n.; 1909, pp. 123–124.</ref><ref>Killits, John M. Toledo And Lucas County, Ohio, 1623–1923, Vol. 1. Chicago: The S. J. Clarke publishing company, 1923, p. 225.</ref>
The Great Black Swamp's name originated during the War of 1812, possibly referencing its black soil, the way its trees blocked sunlight, or the terrain's challenges for military transport.<ref>Kaatz, Martin. "The Settlement of the Black Swamp of Northwestern Ohio (Part I)". Northwest Ohio Quarterly, Vol. XXV, No. 1, 1953, p. 25.</ref> On September 29, 1812, the first Ohio battle of the war took place in the swamp between Americans and Indigenous, ending in a draw on the Marblehead Peninsula in Sandusky Bay.<ref>MARBLEHEADOHIO.ORG. "History: the First Battle Site". Village of Marblehead, Ohio (government website), Community/Page/History, 2025.</ref><ref>Atwater, Caleb, 1778–1867. "War with Great Britain". A History of the State of Ohio, Natural And Civil, 2nd edition. Cincinnati: Stereotyped by Glezen & Shepard, 1838, p. 225.</ref> Shawnee leaders Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa formed an indigenous alliance to resist American expansion.<ref>NPS.GOV. "Person: Tecumseh". National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, WEB: last updated November 12, 2023.</ref> After their defeat at the Battle of Tippecanoe (1811), this confederacy united with the British during the War of 1812 but disbanded following Tecumseh's death at the Battle of the Thames (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, was ceded by the Indigenous peoples to the U.S. government.<ref>Kappler, Charles J., compiler and editor. "Treaty with the Wyandot, Etc., 1817". Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, Vol. 2 (Treaties), Washington, D.C.: The Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, 1904, pp. 145–155.</ref><ref>Royce, Charles C., compiler. "Schedule of Indian Land Cessions (Cessions 87 & 88)". Indian Land Cessions in the United States, Eighteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1896–'97, J.W. Powell, Director. Washington, D.C., 1899, pp. 684–685.</ref> 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.<ref>Cass, Lewis. "Lewis Cass to John Johnston, January 30, 1818". John Johnston Papers, MIC 125, Ohio History Connection, Columbus.</ref>
The genocide of Indigenous peoples (American Indians/Native Americans) is often minimized by the denials of such human atrocities.<ref>Whitt, Laurelyn; Clarke, Alan W. "North American Genocides Denial". North American Genocides: Indigenous Nations, Settler Colonialism, and International Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019, pp. 8–25.</ref> Settler colonialism's eliminatory dynamic was driven by the desire to acquire land and resources, and by anti-Indigenous racism that portrayed Indigenous people as "inferior" and as obstacles to conquest.<ref>Whitt, Laurelyn; Clarke, Alan W. "Introduction". North American Genocides: Indigenous Nations, Settler Colonialism, and International Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019, p. 4.</ref> Although the term Manifest destiny was first used in 1845, the underlying ideas already existed in places like the Great Black Swamp region by the early 19th century. The Indian Removal Act (1830) enabled white settlers to continue the violent removal of Indigenous peoples from their lands.<ref>Bowes, John P. "American Indian Removal beyond the Removal Act". Native American and Indigenous Studies, vol. 1, no. 1, 2014, pp. 65–87.</ref>
In addition to forced removals, the U.S. government promoted the cultural assimilation of Indigenous peoples. This was advocated as early as 1805, when Thomas Jefferson urged Congress for Indigenous people to abandon hunting and adopt European-American agriculture.<ref>Jefferson, Thomas. "Second Inaugural Address of Thomas Jefferson, Washington, D.C., 4 March 1805". The Avalon Project, Yale Law School, Lillian Goldman Law Library.</ref> From the mid-17th century Jesuit missions in North America and Harvard Indian College to 19th-century American Indian boarding schools and mission schools, Europeans and Americans believed they were on a "civilizing mission" to assimilate Indigenous peoples.
From 1822 to 1834, the Ebenezer Mission School (or Old Maumee Mission School) operated on the Maumee River in the Great Black Swamp in Wood County. Established by the Western Presbyterian Missionary Society of Pennsylvania, which owned Missionary Island and 372 adjacent acres, it focused on "Christianizing and civilizing the Indians."<ref>Rose, John. "The Big Island" Waterville Historical Society, WEB: January 10, 2021.</ref> Rev. Isaac Van Tassel and his wife, Lucia, ran the complex, which included a two-story Mission House.<ref>Rose, V.J. "Where, Oh Where Did the Maumee Indian Mission Marker Move?" Waterville Historical Society, WEB: April 25, 2024.</ref> It had a schoolhouse, a blacksmith shop, a stable, and agricultural land with livestock, and was managed with assistants, teachers, and laborers.<ref>Tucker, Patrick. "When War Under Heaven Ended: Tracking Pontiac's and Atawang's Bands of Odawa and Ojibwa in Ohio, Walpole Island (Canada), Kansas, and Oklahoma". Annual Meeting of the Center for French Colonial Studies, University of Toledo, October 2015, p. 20, DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.29258.93125.</ref> The school typically hosted 80 to 150 Indigenous boys and girls, aged 6 to 20. Beyond formal instruction, activities included sports, sledding, making maple sugar, and harvesting thousands of bushels of hickory nuts for sale in eastern markets.<ref>Howe, Henry (1816–1893). Historical Collections of Ohio: In Two Volumes, An Encyclopedia of the State. The Ohio centennial edition. Cincinnati: Published by the state of Ohio, Vol. 1, 1907, p. 663.</ref>
The students were mostly Ottawa, Chippewa, Miami, Shawnee, Munsee, Wyandotte, and Potawatomi. Rev. Van Tassel and the teachers taught Indigenous children at the school, and also taught their parents and elders when they visited them in their lands.<ref>American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Twentieth Annual Report of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Boston: Printed for the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, October 1829, p. 89.</ref> They also preached in nearby white settlements.<ref>American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. The Missionary Herald ... for the Year 1830. Boston: Printed for the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, Vol. XXVI, 1830, p. 13.</ref> At the school, students learned the Bible, arithmetic, grammar, and geography.<ref>Green, Ashbel. A Historical Sketch Or Compendious View of Domestic and Foreign Missions in the Presbyterian Church of the United States of America. Philadelphia: William S. Martien, 1838, pp. 73–74.</ref> Van Tassel and his wife learned Indigenous languages to translate religious lectures and hymns. They gave Indigenous children spelling books, with scriptures and hymns, translated in languages such as Ottawa.<ref>CLEMENTS.UMICH.EDU. "Case 15: Boarding Schools". William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan, WEB: 2025.</ref> The Ottawa children had always called the Western Basin of Lake Erie home, known in their own language as "Gitche Gumegsuwach" (Template:Not a typo).<ref>OTTAWATRIBE.GOV. "Our History: The Great Lakes". Ottawa Tribe of Oklahoma, WEB: 2025.</ref>
The school had been developing a growing community.<ref>Knapp, H. S. (Horace S.). History of the Maumee Valley: Commencing With Its Occupation by the French In 1680, to Which Is Added Sketches of Some of Its Moral And Material Resources As They Exist In 1872. Toledo: Blade Mammoth Printing and Publishing House, 1872, pp. 665–667.</ref> However, the Indian Removal Act started to induce Indigenous peoples to sell their lands to the U.S. government and move them out by force. Horrified by the Removals, Van Tassel had the Presbyterian Missionary Society donate 600 to 700 acres of his school's land to the Ottawa people so they could stay.<ref>American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Report of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions Read at the Twenty-Fourth Annual Meeting. Boston: Printed for the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, 1833, Chapter: Mission at the Maumee, pp. 129–130.</ref> This was not to last. The school closed in April 1834 because of the U.S. government's Indian Removal program, which moved the Indigenous populations west of the Mississippi River.<ref>American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Report of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions Read at the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting. Boston: Printed for the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, 1834, Chapter: Mission at Maumee, p. 126-127.</ref> The school is not officially listed as a boarding school by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.<ref>BIA.GOV. "Federal Indian Board School Initiative". Bureau of Indian Affairs, U.S. Department of the Interior, WEB: 2025.</ref><ref>BOARDINGSCHOOLHEALING.ORG "List of Indian Boarding Schools in the United States". The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, WEB: January 2025.</ref>
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.<ref>Kappler, Charles J., compiler and editor. "Treaty with the Ottawa, Etc., 1831". Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, Vol. 2 (Treaties), Washington, D.C.: The Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, 1904, pp. 335–339.</ref><ref>Royce, Charles C., compiler. "Schedule of Indian Land Cessions (Cessions 167, 168)". Indian Land Cessions in the United States, Eighteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1896–'97, J.W. Powell, Director. Washington, D.C., 1899, pp. 734–735.</ref> 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.<ref>Kappler, Charles J., compiler and editor. "Treaty with the Wyandot, 1832". Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, Vol. 2 (Treaties), Washington, D.C.: The Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, 1904, pp. 339–341.</ref><ref>Royce, Charles C., compiler. "Schedule of Indian Land Cessions (Cession 171)". Indian Land Cessions in the United States, Eighteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1896–'97, J.W. Powell, Director. Washington, D.C., 1899, pp. 734–735.</ref> 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.<ref>Kappler, Charles J., compiler and editor. "Treaty with the Ottawa, 1833". Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, Vol. 2 (Treaties), Washington, D.C.: The Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, 1904, pp. 392–394.</ref><ref>Royce, Charles C., compiler. "Schedule of Indian Land Cessions (Cession 183)". Indian Land Cessions in the United States, Eighteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1896–'97, J.W. Powell, Director. Washington, D.C., 1899, pp. 748–749.</ref>
In 1841, by the Portage River in the Great Black Swamp, a group of white people murdered a Wyandot, Chief Summundewat, who was one of the most vocal leaders opposed to the Indian Removals.<ref>Various authors. "Wyandot Removal Trail". Cultural Division of Wyandotte Nation, University of Cincinnati, Web: 2024.</ref><ref>INDIANREMOVALOHIO.ORG. "Nations: Chief Summendawat". Exiled: Ohio's Indian Removal, Xavier University, WEB: 2017.</ref><ref>Evers-Ross, C.W.; Oblinger, F.J. "Atrocious Murder of Summundewat, One of the Most Noble Chiefs of the Wyandots". Reminiscences of pioneer days in Wood County and the Maumee Valley: a pioneer scrap book. Bowling Green, Ohio: s.n.; 1909, pp. 46–51. Error in book: death was 1841, not 1845.</ref> On March 17, 1842, the Wyandot Tribal Council signed a treaty with Special Commissioner John Johnston and sold all of their remaining lands in Michigan and 109,144 acres in the Ohio counties of Wyandot and Crawford.<ref>Klopfenstein, Carl G. "The Removal of the Wyandots from Ohio". Ohio Historical Quarterly, V. 66, No. 2, April 1957, pp. 128–129.</ref> In 1842, Charles Dickens, who was traveling through the U.S. at that time, met with the last of the Wyandot people in Ohio, and with Johnston himself, who had just negotiated the treaty. Dickens wrote about this encounter in his book, American Notes. He observed some of the Wyandot arguing with each other over the Removals, and he listened to Johnston, who spoke to him about the Wyandot, and gave him "a moving account of their strong attachment to the familiar scenes of their infancy, and in particular to the burial-places of their kindred; and of their great reluctance to leave them".<ref name="Dickens, Charles 1870">Dickens, Charles (1812–1870). American Notes: for General Circulation. London: Chapman and Hall, 1842, Vol. 2, Ch. 6, pp. 168–169.</ref>
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 the Indigenous as agents assured them they would always own the land they would be moved to out west, in Indian Territory. Records indicate an agent was told by a Wyandotte chief: <templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" />
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.<ref>Finley, James B. Life among the Indians, or, Personal reminiscences and historical incidents illustrative of Indian life and character. Cincinnati: The Methodist Book Concern, 1857, p. 365.</ref>{{#if:|
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Draining the swamp
First stages of settlement and development
Following the forced removals of the Indigenous populations, white American settlement accompanied the Great Black Swamp's drainage. While dry uplands were settled early, the swamp's muddy terrain delayed its development for decades.<ref>Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society. Ohio Archaeological And Historical Publications, Vol. 13. Columbus: Published for the Society by F.J. Heer, 1904, p. 241-242.</ref> Its impassibility factored into conflicts.<ref>Atwater, Caleb, 1778–1867. "War with Great Britain". A History of the State of Ohio, Natural And Civil, 2nd edition. Cincinnati: Stereotyped by Glezen & Shepard, 1838, p. 190-191.</ref> The Black Swamp Mutiny of 1813 occurred when American soldiers got lost in the swamp en route to the Battle of the Thames.<ref>Howe, Henry (1816–1893). Historical Collections of Ohio: In Two Volumes, An Encyclopedia of the State. The Ohio centennial edition. Cincinnati: Published by the state of Ohio, Vol. 1, 1907, p. 248-249.</ref> During the 1835–36 Toledo War, militias could not engage in the wetlands. Even with a corduroy road, travel could take weeks; wheeled transport was often impossible most of the year.<ref>McMurray, William J., ed. History of Auglaize County Ohio. Vol. 1. Indianapolis: Historical Publishing Company, 1923, 335.</ref><ref>Howe, Henry (1816–1893). Historical Collections of Ohio: In Three Volumes; an Encyclopedia of the State ... : With Notes of a Tour Over it In 1886 ... Contrasting the Ohio of 1846 With 1886–90. Ohio centennial ed. Columbus, Ohio: Henry Howe & Son, Vol. 3, 1891, p. 269.</ref><ref>Evers-Ross, C.W.; Oblinger, F.J. "The Stone Road"; "Worst of All Roads: Graphic Description of the Maumee and Western Reserve Road". Reminiscences of pioneer days in Wood County and the Maumee Valley: a pioneer scrap book. Bowling Green, Ohio: s.n.; pp. 43–44; 123–124.</ref><ref>Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society. Ohio Archaeological And Historical Publications, Vol. 9. Columbus: Published for the Society by F.J. Heer, 1900–1901, pp. 266–267, 474.</ref>
The General Land Office (GLO), established in 1812, managed the Public Land Survey System's surveying and platting, established by the Land Ordinance of 1785. To sell the Ohio Lands, the GLO required surveyors to record detailed landscape observations. GLO surveys from 1816 to 1856 documented the location of wetlands and streams, assessed the agricultural potential of soils, noted the quantity and quality of timber (including tree species and diameter), and recorded features like burned areas, beaver floodings, and Native American or early-settler cultural sites.<ref>Comer, P.J., D.A. Albert, H.A. Wells, B.L. Hart, J.B. Raab, D.L. Price, D.M. Kashian, R.A. Corner & D.W. Schuen (map interpretation); T.R. Leibfreid, M.B. Austin, C.J. DeLain, L. Prange-Gregory, L.J. Scrimger, K.M. Korroch, & JG. Spitzley (digital map production). "Vegetation of Michigan circa 1800, An Interpretation of the General Land Office Surveys 1816–1856". MNFI Report 1995-006, Michigan's Presettlement Vegetation, as Interpreted from the General Land Office Surveys 1816–1856. Michigan Natural Features Inventory, Lansing, 1995, page 4.</ref>
Survey records created to sell land to 19th-century settlers are now being used today to create Geographic Information System (GIS) presettlement vegetation maps for Ohio.<ref name="arcgis.com"/> Researchers can use these maps to identify environments that existed over 200 years ago. Michigan State University’s maps record in great detail the swamp's extent in Michigan.<ref name="mnfi.anr.msu.edu"/> Other maps record the swamp's extent in Indiana.<ref name="indianamap-inmap.hub.arcgis.com"/>
Modern GIS maps follow the work of people like Dr. Paul Sears, Dr. Edgar Nelson Transeau, and Dr. Robert B. Gordon, who created the first presettlement vegetation map in 1966.<ref>LIBRARY.OSU.EDU. "Gordon's Natural Vegetation Ohio Map". The Ohio State University Libraries, WEB: July, 2018.</ref><ref>LIBRARY.OSU.EDU. "Original Vegetation of Ohio At the Time of the Earliest Land Surveys". Orton Memorial Library of Geology, The Ohio State University (Columbus, OH), WEB: July, 2018.</ref><ref>Stuckey, Ronald L. “Robert Benson Gordon (1901-1981): A Biographical Sketch Emphasizing His Studies of Natural Vegetation Mapping” Bartonia, no. 48, 1981, pp. 34–41.</ref> In 2025, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (Ohio DNR) began building a more detailed Ohio presettlement vegetation map than previous versions.<ref>OHIODNR.GOV. "18th Century Vegetation of Ohio". Ohio Department of Natural Resources, WEB: October, 2025.</ref>
GIS presettlement vegetation maps show the Great Black Swamp was not uniform, but a composition of varied wetland fragments shaped by elevation and terrain. The outline was defined by three large continuous wetland fragments:
- Western/Central Fragment: ≥850,000 acres (344,000 ha), starting near New Haven, IN,<ref name="indianamap-inmap.hub.arcgis.com"/> and ending near New Rochester, OH.<ref name="arcgis.com"/>
- Eastern Fragment: ≥630,700 acres (255,200 ha), extending from Fostoria and Bowling Green to Lake Erie.<ref name="arcgis.com"/>
- Northern Fragment: ≥272,700 acres (110,400 ha), located north of the Maumee River from Liberty Center, OH,<ref name="arcgis.com"/> and extending into Palmyra Township, MI.<ref name="mnfi.anr.msu.edu"/>
Using GIS, the estimated mean proximity distance between each of the three large wetland fragments was 1.5 miles (2.4 km).<ref>DOC.ARCGIS.COM. "Measure scenes". ArcGIS Online (ESRI.COM), WEB: 2025.</ref> Due to variances in cartographic methodology and the inclusion criteria for dry uplands, the estimated swamp size can range from 1.5 million acres (610,000 ha) up to the Ohio DNR's estimation of over 3.3 million acres (1.3 million ha).<ref name="Fretwell, Judy; Williams, John D.; Redman, Philip."/> Outliers potentially missed by surveyors measuring wetlands in the early 19th century was how seasonal precipitation expanded the swamp's borders, turning dry forests into flooded forests, dry prairies into wet prairies, and other dry areas into vernal pools.<ref>Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society. Ohio Archaeological And Historical Publications, Vol. 13. Columbus: Published for the Society by F.J. Heer, 1904, p. 240.</ref>
The swamp in Michigan was called "Cottonwood Swamp" due to its large cottonwoods measuring 6 to 9 feet (1.8 to 2.7 M) in diameter.<ref>Bonner, R. I. (Richard Illenden). Memoirs of Lenawee County, Michigan... Vol. 1. Madison, WI: Western Historical Association, 1909, pp. 671–672.</ref><ref>Whitney, W. A.; Bonner, R. I. (Richard Illenden). History and biographical record of Lenawee County, Michigan... Vol. 1. Adrian, MI: W. Stearns & Co., 1879, pp. 132, 157, 374, 410, 423, 452, 463.</ref><ref>Wessel, Bob. "When 'Draining the Swamp' had nothing to do with Washington D.C., but did impact Lenawee County". Lenconnect.com Daily Telegram, WEB: May 25, 2021.</ref><ref>Wing, Talcott Enoch (1819–1890). History of Monroe County, Michigan. New York: Munsell & company, 1890, p. 188.</ref><ref>Knapp, H. S. (Horace S.). History of the Maumee Valley: Commencing With Its Occupation by the French In 1680, to Which Is Added Sketches of Some of Its Moral And Material Resources As They Exist In 1872. Toledo: Blade Mammoth Printing and Publishing House, 1872, p. 551.</ref> Its extension from Michigan into Fulton County, Ohio was simply called the "Black Swamp".<ref>Reighard, Frank H. A Standard History of Fulton County, Ohio: An Authentic Narrative of the Past, With an Extended Survey of Modern Developments In the Progress of Town And County, Vol. 1. Chicago/New York: The Lewis Publishing Company, 1920, pp. 73, 380, 455.</ref><ref>Boerner, Ralph E. J.; Cho, Do-Soon. "Structure and Composition of Goll Woods, an Old-Growth Forest Remnant in Northwestern Ohio". Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club, vol. 114, no. 2, 1987, pp. 173–79.</ref> Historians have arbitrarily suggested the Great Black Swamp's boundaries were only south of the Maumee River and in Allen and Defiance counties north of the river, ignoring the swamp's extent in Henry, Fulton, Lucas, Lenawee, and Monroe counties.<ref>Kaatz, Martin. "The Settlement of the Black Swamp of Northwestern Ohio (Part I)". Northwest Ohio Quarterly, Vol. XXV, No. 1, 1953, p. 22.</ref><ref>Aldrich, Lewis Cass. History of Henry And Fulton Counties, Ohio. Syracuse, NY: D. Mason & Co., 1888, pp. 59–61.</ref> Geological evidence, 19th-century land surveys, and presettlement vegetation maps conclusively show the swamp's true extent across the postglacial terrain from the Fort Wayne Moraine to Lake Erie, spanning Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan.
GIS presettlement vegetation maps can verify claims about the swamp, such as one about Charles Dickens' 1842 Columbus to Upper Sandusky stagecoach trip as having been inside the swamp.<ref>WTOL11. "Charles Dickens travels through the Black Swamp, Today in Toledo History July 22". WTOL11 (YouTube channel), WEB: July 22, 2021.</ref><ref>Chang, Ruth. "Trailblazers of the Great Black Swamp: 31 Miles, 31 Taverns". Midstory, WEB: September 25, 2018.</ref> GIS maps disprove this idea.<ref name="arcgis.com"/> That trip included a corduroy road that produced, Dickens wrote, "the very slightest of jolts" that could "have dislocated all the bones in the human body."<ref>Dickens, Charles (1812–1870). American Notes: for General Circulation. London: Chapman and Hall, 1842, Vol. 2, Ch. 6, pp. 160–166.</ref> Dickens left Upper Sandusky by stagecoach for Tiffin, where only then did he travel through the actual swamp by train to visit Sandusky.<ref>Dickens, Charles (1812–1870). American Notes: for General Circulation. London: Chapman and Hall, 1842, Vol. 2, Ch. 6, pp. 170.</ref>
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. Settlers bought parcels of land in the swamp within the Congress Lands, which were for sale to the general public, and established themselves within the survey townships.
Settlers, such as individuals and families, were able to buy land under the Preemption Act of 1841 and the Homestead Acts. Vagueness in the laws enabled rich investors and land speculators to buy large tracts of land sight unseen, and engage in fraud.<ref>ARCHIVES.GOV. "Homestead Act 1862". National Archives, WEB: June 7, 2022.</ref>
Beginning in the 1850s, the states undertook various 40-year projects to drain the swamp for agriculture and easier travel. The Swamp Land Act of 1850 advanced the drainage of wetlands across the United States, including the Great Black Swamp. In 1859, the Ohio General Assembly passed the "Ohio Ditch Law", enabling settlers to build ditches that would turn wetlands into farms.<ref>William B. Woods, Speaker, House of Representatives; Martin Welker, President of the Senate. Acts of a General Nature and Local Laws and Joint Resolutions Passed by the Fifty-Third General Assembly of the State of Ohio. Ohio State Assembly, 1859, vol. 56, pages 58–62.</ref><ref>Jones, Robert Leslie. The History of Agriculture in Ohio to 1880. Kent State University Press, 1983, p. 66.</ref>
Settlers drained the swamp from the 1850s to the mid-1880s. They hand-dug ditches to lower the water table, then buried clay tiles (pipes made from local clay) in the exposed ground to drain excess water into the ditches. Settlers farmed the land's soils, which historian Henry Howe described as a foot of "black decaying matter" over several feet of "rich yellow clay", followed by a "stratum of black clay of great depth."<ref name="babel.hathitrust.org">Howe, Henry (1816–1893). Historical Collections of Ohio: In Two Volumes, An Encyclopedia of the State. The Ohio centennial edition. Cincinnati: Published by the state of Ohio, Vol. 1, 1907, p. 903-904.</ref>
Settlers built their homes on river banks and sand ridges.<ref>Kaatz, Martin. "The Settlement of the Black Swamp of Northwestern Ohio (Part II)". Northwest Ohio Quarterly, Vol. XXV, No. 3, 1953, p. 143.</ref> They often made their homes out of logs, and hunted game in the swamp for food, and for skins and furs to make clothing and other items.<ref>Winter, Nevin O. A History of Northwest Ohio: A Narrative Account of its Historical Progress and Development from the First European Exploration of the Maumee and Sandusky Valleys and the Adjacent Shores of Lake Erie, Down to the Present Time The Lewis Publishing Company (Chicago), 1917, p. 1753.</ref> They also caught large quantities of fish in the Sandusky and Maumee Rivers.<ref>Kaatz, Martin. "The Settlement of the Black Swamp of Northwestern Ohio (Part II)". Northwest Ohio Quarterly, Vol. XXV, No. 3, 1953, p. 135.</ref>
In open wet prairies without trees, water could be 4 feet (1.2 M) deep, going up to a horse's saddle skirt.<ref>Leeson, M.A.; Evers, C.W. Commemorative Historical and Biographical Record of Wood County, Ohio. Chicago: J.H. Beers and Co., 1897, p. 36.</ref> In other places, the land was under 2 feet (0.6 M) of water because the creeks were flooded by beaver dams, and it took years for settlers to remove them.<ref>Kinder, George. History of Putnam County, Ohio: Its Peoples, Industries, and Institutions, Part 1. Indianapolis, IN: B.F. Bowen & Company, Inc., 1915, p. 143.</ref>
Like surveyors, settlers noted the swamp's diverse vegetation. One account from Putnam County observed 32 tree, plant, and shrub species, including buckeye, black locust, honey locust, black ash, white ash, burr oak, red oak, white oak, jack oak, beech, sugar maple, sycamore, pawpaw, dogwood, ironwood, linden, willow, cottonwood, black walnut, white walnut, shellbark hickory, smoothbark hickory, white elm, and red elm.<ref>Kinder, George. History of Putnam County, Ohio: Its Peoples, Industries, and Institutions, Part 1. Indianapolis, IN: B.F. Bowen & Company, Inc., 1915, p. 272.</ref>
Settlers saw the swamp as "primeval forest".<ref>Kinder, George. History of Putnam County, Ohio: Its Peoples, Industries, and Institutions, Part 2. Indianapolis, IN: B.F. Bowen & Company, Inc., 1915, p. 1019.</ref> Historian Martin Kaatz wrote about early-19th century accounts of how 100 foot (30 M) trees "nearly shut out the sun's rays except during the period of high sun".<ref>Kaatz, Martin. "The Settlement of the Black Swamp of Northwestern Ohio (Part II)". Northwest Ohio Quarterly, Vol. XXV, No. 3, 1953, p. 140.</ref> Howe described the swamp's dense foliage was "almost impenetrable to the rays of the sun".<ref name="babel.hathitrust.org"/>
"Confused speculation": Public health crises in the swamp
Diseases and epidemics were common during the draining of the swamp. Their symptoms were recorded in medical journals and notes, but their causes were not known, and their high mortality rate possessed the first settlers in the swamp with fear and panic.<ref>Howe, Henry (1816–1893). Historical Collections of Ohio: In Three Volumes; an Encyclopedia of the State ... : With Notes of a Tour Over it In 1886 ... Contrasting the Ohio of 1846 With 1886–90. Ohio centennial ed. Columbus, Ohio: Henry Howe & Son, Vol. 3, 1891, p. 416-418.</ref> 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".<ref name="The Decline of Epidemics in Ohio">Patterson, Dr. Robert G. "The Decline of Epidemics in Ohio". Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly, XLVIII-LIV, 1945, pp. 310–337.</ref>
Settlers often blamed 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".<ref>Floyd, Barbara, et al. "Medicine on the Maumee: A History of Healthcare in Northwest Ohio". Ward M. Canaday Center for Special Collections, University of Toledo 2012, p. 5</ref> One incident in particular involved the town of Gilboa in 1852, located next to the swamp. A cholera outbreak caused nearly 600 people to flee the town in fear and terror, and 13 people were reported killed by the disease.<ref>Woodworth, MD, John M. The Cholera Epidemic of 1873 in the United States. Treasury Department, Supervising Surgeon's Office, 1875, p. 634.</ref> It was later determined that a damp cellar that stored trash and decomposing vegetable matter was the source of the outbreak.<ref>Pitcher, MD, Z.; Johnson, MD, N.; Tilden, MD, D.; Adam's Allen, MD, J.; Geo. Mendenhall, Chairman. "Report On The Epidemics Of Ohio, Indiana, And Michigan, For The Years 1852 And 1853". Transactions of the American Medical Association, Volume 7. New York: Charles B. Norton, 1854. p. 349.</ref>
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.<ref name="The Decline of Epidemics in Ohio"/> 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.<ref>Drake, M.D., Daniel. A Systematic Treatise, Historical, Etiological, and Practical, on the Principle Diseases of the Interior Valley of North America. Winthrop B. Smith & Co. Publishers, Philadelphia: Grigg, Elliott & Co., New York: Mason & Law, 1850, pp. 300–369.</ref>
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 deadly in the swamp, yet settlers were unaware that mosquitoes, not "bad air", transmitted it until Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran's discovery of plasmodium in 1880. A 2008 study of U.S. malaria covering the years 1850–1860 highlighted widespread public health ignorance at that time, noting how settlers did not know building ditches could create mosquito vectors, that mosquitoes favored rainfalls, and that temperature was the most crucial risk factor for infections.<ref>Hong, Sok Chul. "The Burden of Early Exposure to Malaria in the United States, 1850–1860: Malnutrition and Immune Disorders". The Journal of Economic History, vol. 67,4 (2007): 1001–1035, DOI:10.1017/S0022050707000472.</ref> "Confused speculation" led to common misdiagnosis, leaving the exact number of malaria deaths in the swamp unknown. Even the 1870 U.S. census noted the lack of sufficient death records as the "gross incompleteness of the Returns of Deaths". The census mapped a high proportion of malaria deaths in northwest Ohio.<ref>United States. Statistical atlas of the United States based on the results of the ninth census 1870 with contributions from many eminent men of science and several departments of the government. United States, Census Office, 9th census, 1870. New York: J. Bien, lith., 1874, pp. 144–182.</ref>
Indigenous peoples around the swamp suffered significant population losses from the 17th to the 19th centuries due to disease endemics. Ironically, these major outbreaks did not originate in the swamp, but from European and early American settlers who brought new viruses to which they were already immune. These introduced diseases, such as smallpox in the mid-17th century, decimated Indigenous communities across North America.<ref>Crosby, A. Virgin Soil Epidemics. The William and Mary Quarterly, 1976, p. 290.</ref><ref>Richter, D. Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America. Harvard University Press, 2001, p. 60.</ref><ref>Calloway, C. The Shawnees and the War for America. Viking Adult, 2007, pp. 6–7.</ref> Diseases killed an estimated 90% of all Indigenous peoples across the Western Hemisphere.<ref>Koch, A., Brierly, C., Maslin, M. M., and Lewis, S. L. "Earth System Impacts of the European Arrival and Great Dying in the Americas after 1492". Quaternary Science Reviews, vol. 207, 2019, pp. 13–36.</ref> Indigenous peoples had lived with the swamp for at least 13,000 years, but populations significantly declined only after contact with Europeans diseases. Germ warfare used by European-Americans to gain military and territorial advantage over the Indigenous was also a problem.<ref>Fenn, Elizabeth A. "Biological Warfare in Eighteenth-Century North America: Beyond Jeffrey Amherst". Journal of American History, Volume 86, Issue 4, March 2000, pp. 1552–1580.</ref><ref>Ostler, Jeffrey."To Extirpate the Indians": An Indigenous Consciousness of Genocide in the Ohio Valley and Lower Great Lakes, 1750s–1810.". The William and Mary Quarterly, 72, no. 4 (2015): pp. 587–622.</ref>
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".<ref>ODH. "What Is Public Health" Ohio Dept. of Health.</ref>
The Underground Railroad in the Great Black Swamp
The Great Black Swamp offered hope for people escaping slavery from the American South in the form of the Underground Railroad. During slavery, wetlands played critical roles in concealing the movement 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.<ref>Funk, William H. "The Dismal Swamp: One Road Out Of Slavery Took You Straight Into the Boggiest Place You've Ever Been". Humanities: The Magazine of the National Endowment for the Humanities, WEB: Spring 2017, Vol. 38, No. 2.</ref><ref>NPSHISTORY.COM. "The Great Dismal Swamp and the Underground Railroad". Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Dept. of the Interior, WEB: brochure</ref> 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.<ref>NPS.GOV. "Harriet Tubman: Enslaved Families in Dorchester County". National Park Service, U.S. Dept. of the Interior, October 12, 2022.</ref> In the midwest, the Great Black Swamp was 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.<ref>Miller, Shawndra. "Swamps and the Underground Railroad". Newsroom, Central Indiana Land Trust, WEB: published February 20, 2024.</ref>
People who helped the slaves in the Underground Railroad were called agents and operators. They took massive risks by violating the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which demanded the return of slaves to their owners.
Despite not having slavery, Ohio was settled by white southerners who passed the Black Laws of 1804 and 1807. These laws codified white supremacy, imposing cruel restrictions and making black residents vulnerable to kidnapping and trafficking to the South.<ref>Biddle, Dan. "Ohio's 'Black Laws'". Special Feature, Equal Justice Initiative, WEB: pub. April 1, 2025.</ref> This elevated the swamp's importance on the Underground Railroad, where its difficult, foreboding terrain offered concealment for those escaping to Canada.
In 1998, U.S. Congress passed legislation to create a National Park Service program called the Network to Freedom, in order to honor, preserve, and promote the people who helped free the slaves.<ref>NPS.GOV. "Network to Freedom". National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, WEB: Updated February 12, 2025.</ref> 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.<ref>Network to Freedom. "Visit Underground Railroad Locations". Network to Freedom, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, WEB: updated August 18, 2025.</ref> This map can be cross-referenced with GIS presettlement vegetation maps to understand what the slaves saw in the Great Black Swamp.<ref name="arcgis.com"/>
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 forests, 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 savannas 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 abolitionist Reverend 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.<ref>Anger, B. "The Story of Rev. William King and the Buxton Mission". The Presbyterian Church in Canada Archives, WEB: February 2, 2017.</ref> His story was told in Annie Straith Jamieson's 1925 book, William King: Friend and Champion of Slaves.<ref>Jamieson, Annie Straith. William King: Friend and Champion of Slaves. Toronto: Missions of Evangelism, Confederation Life Building, 1925.</ref>
Rev. King's brother, John King, who lived in Findlay and was known locally as "Uncle John King", was one of many people who initiated escapes and hid slaves in barns, cellars, pens, garrets, cornfields, sacks, and other hiding places within the swamp's counties of Wood and Hancock. Historians estimate 1,543 to over 2,000 Underground Railroad agents and operators in Ohio helped between 40,000 and 50,000 fugitive slaves escape to ports near Cleveland, and escape through the Great Black Swamp to ports near Toledo and Sandusky to cross Lake Erie and find freedom in Canada.<ref name="jstor.org">Preston, E. Delorus. "The Underground Railroad in Northwest Ohio" The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 17, no. 4 (1932): 409–36.</ref>
Runaway slaves used every effort to baffle their slave catchers trying to recapture them for their owners in the slave states. Slaves could use the Great Black Swamp's terrain to their advantage, which was already known to the locals and even the military as "impassable", with its "knee-deep" muck and thick growth of trees.<ref>Abbott, John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot), 1805–1877. The History of the State of Ohio: From the Discovery of the Great Valley, to the Present Time. Detroit: Northwestern publishing company, 1875, pp. 410, 623, 629–630.</ref><ref>Atwater, Caleb, 1778–1867. "War with Great Britain"; "Common Roads and Highways". A History of the State of Ohio, Natural And Civil, 2nd edition. Cincinnati: Stereotyped by Glezen & Shepard, 1838, p. 212-223; 284.</ref><ref>Howe, Henry (1816–1893). Historical Collections of Ohio: In Three Volumes; an Encyclopedia of the State ... : With Notes of a Tour Over it In 1886 ... Contrasting the Ohio of 1846 With 1886–90. Ohio centennial ed. Columbus, Ohio: Henry Howe & Son, Vol. 3, 1891, p. 576.</ref> Slaves could also use the swamp to hide, knowing the locals avoided it because of its fearful reputation.<ref>Evers-Ross, C.W.; Oblinger, F.J. "The Maumee Country"; "The Black Swamp "; "Worst of All Roads: Graphic Description of the Maumee and Western Reserve Road". Reminiscences of pioneer days in Wood County and the Maumee Valley: a pioneer scrap book. Bowling Green, Ohio: s.n.; 1909, pp. 79–80; 84; 123–124.</ref><ref>Aldrich, Lewis Cass. History of Henry And Fulton Counties, Ohio. Syracuse, NY: D. Mason & Co., 1888, p. 57.</ref> One historian described it as, "the well known and much dreaded Black Swamp, which was a terror to all travelers".<ref>Various authors. History of Putnam County, Ohio: Illustrated, Containing Outline Map, Fifteen Farm Maps And a History of the County; Lithographic Views of Buildings—public And Private; Portraits of Prominent Men; General Statistics; Miscellaneous Matters, &c. Evansville, Indiana: Unigraphic, (reproduction 1979); Original Publishers: H.H. Hardesty & Co. Publishers (Chicago and Toledo), D.W. Seitz and O.C. Talbot (Ottawa, Ohio), 1880, 1895, p. 53</ref>
Historians believe more stations existed in the Underground Railroad between the Ohio River and Lake Erie than the official records state because of the massive organization of effort and resources to deliver slaves to freedom.<ref name="jstor.org"/> The swamp played an important role in that endeavor.
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.<ref>Fretwell, Judy; Williams, John D.; Redman, Philip. "National Water Summary on Wetland Resources, USGS Water Supply Paper 2425". U.S. Dept. of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey, 1996, p. 21.</ref>
Arriving alone or with their families, settlers felled trees, built their homes and furniture, dug ditches, hunted wild game for food, and prepared their land for their crops and 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.<ref>Kaatz, Martin R. "The Black Swamp: A Study in Historical Geography". Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Vol. 45, No. 1, 1955.</ref><ref>Evers-Ross, C.W.; Oblinger, F.J. "Oil in Wood County". Reminiscences of pioneer days in Wood County and the Maumee Valley: a pioneer scrap book. Bowling Green, Ohio: s.n.; 1909, pp. 104–105.</ref><ref>Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society. Ohio Archaeological And Historical Publications, Vol. 3. Columbus: Published for the Society by F.J. Heer, 1890–1891, p. 176.</ref>
High pressure natural gas was discovered near Findlay while drilling for water in 1884, and petroleum was first discovered in Lima in 1885.<ref>Slocum, M.D., Charles E. History of the Maumee River Basin: From Its Earliest Account To Its Organization Into Counties. Indianapolis, Toledo: Bowen & Slocum, 1905, p. 9</ref> 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.<ref>Howe, Henry (1816–1893). Historical Collections of Ohio: In Three Volumes; an Encyclopedia of the State ... : With Notes of a Tour Over it In 1886 ... Contrasting the Ohio of 1846 With 1886–90. Ohio centennial ed. Columbus, Ohio: Henry Howe & Son, Vol. 3, 1891, p. 580.</ref><ref>Howe, Henry (1816–1893). Historical Collections of Ohio: In Three Volumes; an Encyclopedia of the State ... : With Notes of a Tour Over it In 1886 ... Contrasting the Ohio of 1846 With 1886–90. Ohio centennial ed. Columbus, Ohio: Henry Howe & Son, Vol. 3, 1891, p. 34.</ref>
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.<ref>Kaatz, Martin. "The Settlement of the Black Swamp of Northwestern Ohio (Part III)". Northwest Ohio Quarterly, Vol. XXV, Autumn, No. 4, 1953, p. 206.</ref> 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.<ref name="Undark">Template:Cite magazine</ref><ref>Prince, Hugh. Wetlands of the American Midwest: A Historical Geography of Changing Attitudes, University of Chicago Press, 1998, p. 214.</ref>
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.<ref>WGTE Public Media. "Cornerstones: the Irish in Toledo". WGTE Public Documentaries: Toledo Stories. Toledo Lucas County Public Library Collections, October 8, 2003.</ref> 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 agricultural land.<ref>WGTE Public Media."Cornerstones: the Germans". WGTE Public Documentaries: Toledo Stories. Toledo Lucas County Public Library Collections, November 14, 2002.</ref><ref>Howe, Henry (1816–1893). Historical Collections of Ohio: In Three Volumes; an Encyclopedia of the State ... : With Notes of a Tour Over it In 1886 ... Contrasting the Ohio of 1846 With 1886–90. Ohio centennial ed. Columbus, Ohio: Henry Howe & Son, Vol. 3, 1891, p. 17-18.</ref><ref>Howe, Henry (1816–1893). Historical Collections of Ohio: In Three Volumes; an Encyclopedia of the State ... : With Notes of a Tour Over it In 1886 ... Contrasting the Ohio of 1846 With 1886–90. Ohio centennial ed. Columbus, Ohio: Henry Howe & Son, Vol. 3, 1891, p. 196.</ref>
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Immigrants helped build 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. The canal provided a supply route for farm products, logging, and other commercial goods.
Other immigrants from Europe included Hungarians who had left the Kingdom of Hungary, and then later the Austro-Hungarian Empire. They arrived in northwest Ohio, often because of poverty and over-population in their homeland's rural areas, where a semi-feudal land system created social and economic inequalities for them and their families.<ref>Papp, Susan; Esterhas, Joe. Hungarian Americans and Their Communities of Cleveland. Cleveland Ethnic Heritage Studies, Cleveland State University, 1981. Ch: The Great Immigration (1870–1920). Template:ISBN</ref>
Large numbers of Polish immigrants arrived in the swamp (1870s–1880s), some of whom were fleeing Kulturkampf. Other ethnic groups fleeing economic, religious, and political challenges from Central/Eastern Europe included people from Galicia, in what is now southeastern Poland and Western Ukraine. While some of them worked in Toledo's industries, others farmed in the former swamp, able to own their own land, a right that was taken away from them back in their homeland.<ref>Boberg, Alice; Wroblewski, Ralph. "Part Two: Polish Immigration to the United States". Polish Americans and their Communities of Cleveland. Cleveland Ethnic Heritage Studies, Cleveland State University, 1997, Section: "Economic Immigration: 1865-1920's – Polish Historical and Economic Backgrounds", Template:ISBN</ref>
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The swamp's rich, geologic soils provided a new beginning for African-Americans in farming. This was not made easy by the Ohio Black Laws of 1804 and 1807, which made black people pay a residency fee, register with the county clerk, have a white Ohian as a sponsor, and obtain travel and freedom papers, all under the threat of expulsion.<ref>Boyer, Valerie. Tice Davids: The Origins of the Underground Railroad Name". Ohio History Connection, WEB: February 21, 2024.</ref> African-Americans who achieved success included Archibald Worthington, a former slave who moved from Virginia to northwest Ohio. In 1855, near his 160-acre farm in Defiance County, he created a cemetery which he platted for and donated to other African-Americans.<ref>Marshall, Sarah. "The Worthington Cemetery Project". Defiance Public Library System (General News), WEB: February, 2021.</ref> His cemetery and farm were south of the Maumee River in what used to be elm-ash swamp forests, prairie grasslands, fens, freshwater marshes, and beech forests, according to GIS presettlement vegetation maps.<ref name="arcgis.com"/> The cemetery received a historic marker in 2025.<ref>Doda, Craig; Becker Jones, Devry (editor). "Worthington's Cemetery". The Historical Marker Database, WEB: May 15, 2025.</ref>
A 2009 study described African-American lives in northwest Ohio during the early to mid-19th century, including one colony that lived on 750 acres in Van Wert County; how the family of Godfrey Brown, a runaway slave and Continental Army soldier, brought relatives to Van Wert after buying their release from a Southern plantation in 1830; and generational land owners in Paulding County, like Charles Williams, born 1867, who lived and worked on the farm his grandfather had bought after fleeing slavery.<ref>Rowe, Jill E. "Mixing It up: Early African American Settlements in Northwestern Ohio" Journal of Black Studies, 39, no. 6 (2009): 924–36.</ref> The study claimed racial prejudice was rare where black people lived in Paulding, Van Wert, and other counties in the Great Black Swamp, and that black residents sometimes married white and Indigenous people. A 2024 report claimed race riots in the 1870s pushed out many black families from the region.<ref>Crawford, Kendall. "A long-forgotten Black cemetery in northwest Ohio is finally getting recognized". Ohio Newsroom, Ideastream Public Media, WEB: April 9, 2024.</ref> This contributed to black land loss in the United States.
Industrialists capitalized on the swamp's rich natural resources, including Eber Brock Ward. In 1863, he purchased 4,089 acres of swamp and 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. He brought a steam-powered dredger to help dig the canal, but most of the work was done by hand. Lumbering was profitable until 1895, when a muck fire burned for three months, destroying the rest of the trees near the canal.<ref>Various authors. "New Jerusalem: Eber Brock Ward 1811–1875. Jerusalem Township History, Jerusalem Township government website, 2025.</ref>
Bowling Green resident James B. Hill expedited the draining of swamps with his Buckeye Traction Ditcher.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Hill's ditching machine laid drainage tiles at a record pace. First built in 1893, it was the first successful steam-driven tractor ditcher.<ref>American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). "Buckeye Steam Traction Ditcher". American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Hancock Historical Museum Association, Findlay, Ohio, August 5, 1988.</ref>
Fate of the environment
In the mid-19th century, Ohio did not view the draining of the swamp as resource depletion, environmental degradation, biodiversity loss, or ecosystem collapse. They instead viewed it as "redeeming" the lands for human use.<ref>Various authors. History of Putnam County, Ohio: Illustrated, Containing Outline Map, Fifteen Farm Maps And a History of the County; Lithographic Views of Buildings—public And Private; Portraits of Prominent Men; General Statistics; Miscellaneous Matters, &c. Evansville, Indiana: Unigraphic, (reproduction 1979); Original Publishers: H.H. Hardesty & Co. Publishers (Chicago and Toledo), D.W. Seitz and O.C. Talbot (Ottawa, Ohio), 1880, 1895, p. 21-22.</ref><ref>Killits, John M. Toledo And Lucas County, Ohio, 1623–1923, Vol. 1. Chicago: The S. J. Clarke publishing company, 1923, p. 25.</ref>
Railroads, drainage tile industries, and ditches contributed to the swamp's destruction.<ref>Kaatz, 1955</ref><ref>Howe, Henry (1816–1893). Historical Collections of Ohio: In Three Volumes; an Encyclopedia of the State ... : With Notes of a Tour Over it In 1886 ... Contrasting the Ohio of 1846 With 1886–90. Ohio centennial ed. Columbus, Ohio: Henry Howe & Son, Vol. 3, 1891, p. 143-144.</ref><ref>Jones, Robert Leslie. The History of Agriculture in Ohio to 1880. Kent State University Press, 1983, p. 220.</ref> The Jackson Cut-Off Ditch cost $110,000 to build in the mid-19th century, and drained 30,000 acres (12,140 ha) of wetlands in Wood County.<ref>Howe, Henry (1816–1893). Historical Collections of Ohio: In Three Volumes; an Encyclopedia of the State ... : With Notes of a Tour Over it In 1886 ... Contrasting the Ohio of 1846 With 1886–90. Ohio centennial ed. Columbus, Ohio: Henry Howe & Son, Vol. 3, 1891, p. 557.</ref> It diverted Yellow and Brush Creeks and part of the Portage River's North Branch into Beaver Creek and the Maumee River to drain Wood, Henry, Hancock, and Putnam counties.<ref>Kaatz, Martin. "The Settlement of the Black Swamp of Northwestern Ohio (Part III)". Northwest Ohio Quarterly, Vol. XXV, Autumn, No. 4, 1953, p. 204.</ref>
Lidar-based digital elevation models (DEM) reveal the deep vertical and horizontal ditches dividing the land and routing water toward the Maumee River. These images contrast the ditches with the shallow, meandering channels of the creeks and streams that existed prior to settlement. Today, farming communities must constantly maintain these ditches to prevent local and upstream flooding.<ref>McLaughlin, Jan Larson. "With more than 3,000 miles of ditches, Wood County is in constant battle to keep Black Swamp at bay". BG Independent News, WEB: January 9, 2024.</ref>
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).<ref>1920 Fourteenth Census of the United States. "Drainage 1920 United States". Dept. of Commerce, Government Printing Office, 1920.</ref> About 15,000 miles of these reported ditches were in the former Great Black Swamp region alone.<ref name="asme.org">ASME.ORG "Buckeye Steam Traction Ditcher". The American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Hancock Historical Museum Association, Findlay, OH, August 5, 1988.</ref>
Ohio had over 24 million acres of forest, but by 1883, it only had 4 million.<ref>Ohio DNR. "Ohio Wildlife History Timeline". Division of Wildlife, Ohio Department of Natural Resources, 2016, p. 18.</ref> By the late 1880s, virtually all of the trees in the 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. The last photograph of the swamp, taken in Paulding County in 1890, shows a field covered in tree stumps with small pools of water, stretching as far as the eye can see.<ref>OHIOMEMORY.ORG. "Black Swamp Photographs, Title: Om22_920422_004 (all rights reserved, no reproduction without permission)". Center for Archival Collections, Bowling Green State University, WEB: June 16, 2010.</ref>
Historian Martin Kaatz romanticized the way settlers engaged with nature, stating they had to "wage war" with the environment, and "trees had to be felled, underbrush cleared, stumps removed, and predatory animals killed".<ref>Kaatz, Martin. "The Settlement of the Black Swamp of Northwestern Ohio (Part II)". Northwest Ohio Quarterly, Vol. XXV, No. 3, 1953, p. 151.</ref> Between 1800 and 1855, settlers had completely extirpated wolves, 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.<ref>Ohio DNR. "Ohio Wildlife History Timeline". Division of Wildlife, Ohio Department of Natural Resources, 2016.</ref> The Passenger pigeon also inhabited the swamp, living among the trees unbothered by the muddy surface.<ref>Stothers, David; Tucker, Patrick. The Fry Site: Archaeological and Ethnohistorical Perspecctives on the Maumee River Ottawa of Northwest Ohio. University of Toledo Laboratory of Archaeology, LuLu Press Inc., 2006, p. 134.</ref> It was hunted to extinction, with the last one dying in Ohio in 1914.
In the 19th century, most people favored draining and farming wetlands. Even Charles Dickens in 1842 observed how a wetland near Cincinnati had not been "reclaimed".<ref>Dickens, Charles (1812–1870). American Notes: for General Circulation. London: Chapman and Hall, 1842, Vol. 2, Ch. 6, pp. 160.</ref> However, this period also saw a growing recognition of human and environmental abuses. In Hard Times, Dickens, who was anti-slavery, opposed the way industrialists applied utilitarianism to minimize and exploit workers as "objects" for maximum economic "utility".<ref>Schacht, P. "In Pursuit of Pickwick's Hat: Dickens and the Epistemology of Utilitarianism". Dickens Studies Annual, vol. 40, 2009, pp. 1–21.</ref> Other problems in the 19th and early 20th centuries like utilitarianism were extractivism, which also treated people and environments only as commodities for maximum "utility", causing environmental destruction and human rights abuses.<ref>Morel, E. D. Red Rubber: The Story of the Rubber Slave Trade Which Flourished on the Congo for Twenty Years, 1890–1910. National Labour Press, 1919, pp. 214–215.</ref><ref>Hardenburg, W. E. The Putumayo: The Devil's Paradise; Travels in the Peruvian Amazon Region and an Account of the Atrocities Committed upon the Indians Therein. T. Fisher Unwin, 1912, pp. 26–29.</ref><ref>Bird, Isabella L. (Isabella Lucy), 1831–1904. The Golden Chersonese And the Way Thither. London: J. Murray, 1883, pp. 183, 267–272.</ref>
Manifest Destiny proclaimed if Indigenous lands were not cultivated, they were being "wasted", which was a fallacy white Americans used to seize, settle, and farm Indigenous lands.<ref>AMERICANEXPERIENCE.SI.EDU. "Manifest Destiny and Indian Removal". Smithsonian American Art Museum, WEB: February 2015.</ref> With these mindsets, wetlands were perceived as "wastelands" meant to be converted into "productive property" for maximum commercial profit.<ref>Dillon, L. "Civilizing swamps in California: Formations of race, nature, and property in the nineteenth century U.S. West". Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 40(2), 2021, pp. 258–275.</ref> In Greensburg Township, Putnam County, settlers reportedly perceived the Blanchard River's wetlands as "worthless" until they drained them for farming.<ref>Various authors. History of Putnam County, Ohio: Illustrated, Containing Outline Map, Fifteen Farm Maps And a History of the County; Lithographic Views of Buildings—public And Private; Portraits of Prominent Men; General Statistics; Miscellaneous Matters, &c. Evansville, Indiana: Unigraphic, (reproduction 1979); Original Publishers: H.H. Hardesty & Co. Publishers (Chicago and Toledo), D.W. Seitz and O.C. Talbot (Ottawa, Ohio), 1880, 1895, p. 193</ref>
Natural resource management did not exist at all in the 19th century until rapid deforestation and industrialization in the U.S. made people more aware of the harms 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.<ref>OhioDNR.GOV. "History of Ohio State Forests". Ohio Department of Natural Resources, September 2025.</ref><ref>OhioDNR.GOV. "Division of Wildlife". Ohio Department of Natural Resources, September 2025.</ref> 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. Template:As of, 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.<ref name="Jiang-2024" />
Economic and population growth
The Great Black Swamp's soils power agricultural growth, even after long-term farming exhausted its original soil nutrients and fertilizers became widely used. Since the 19th century, state and federal census records have documented growth in the agricultural economies and populations of Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan. Though a 1921 fire destroyed most of the 1890 U.S. census archives, crucial statistics are preserved at the state level.<ref>Blake, Kellee. "First in the Path of the Firemen: The Fate of the 1890 Population Census". The National Archives (web: ARCHIVES.GOV): Prologue Magazine, Vol. 28, No. 1, Spring 1996, Genealogy Notes.</ref>
In Ohio, the swamp spanned Allen, Defiance, Fulton, Hancock, Henry, Lucas, Ottawa, Paulding, Putnam, Sandusky, Seneca, Van Wert, and Wood counties. The 1920 U.S. Census recorded 37,961 farms in the former Ohio swamp region, with a total "Value of All Crops" of $113,532,368 (unadjusted).<ref>CENSUS.GOV. "Agriculture: Ohio – Statistics For the State And Its Counties". Fourteenth Census of the United States: 1920 Bulletin, Bureau of the Census, Department of Commerce, 1921, pp. 12–20, 30–38.</ref> The reported value only considers costs for labor, fertilizer, and animal feed, excluding expenses for equipment (ploughs, shovels), tools, and materials. Crops grown in the former swamp included corn, wheat, oats, cereals, fruits (such as apples, peaches, strawberries, raspberries), potatoes, tobacco, sugar beets, forage, and hay. The census detailed livestock totals, the value of related products (dairy, wool), farm mortgage debts, and other important figures.
The total population for the thirteen Ohio counties within the former swamp in 1920 was 675,761. It was 207,922 in 1860, when settlers had spent a year beginning to turn the swamp into farms since the Ohio Ditch Law was passed in 1859.<ref>CENSUS.GOV. "Population: Ohio – Number Of Inhabitants, By Counties And Minor Civil Divisions". Fourteenth Census of the United States: 1920 Bulletin, Bureau of the Census, Department of Commerce, 1921, pp. 6–7.</ref>
In 2022, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Ohio census reported the number of farms and revenues from the thirteen Ohio counties in the former swamp. In total, they had 11,348 farms, and generated $2,144,563,000 in revenues from crops, excluding animal products. Crops were mostly soybean, corn, and wheat.<ref>USDA.GOV. "Census of Agriculture 2022 State and County Profiles – Ohio". WEB: National Agricultural Statistics Services, United States Department of Agriculture, 2022.</ref> In 2020, the total population of the thirteen Ohio counties was 1,085,831.<ref>CENSUS.GOV. "Ohio: 2020 Census – Population and Housing". United States Census Bureau, Department of Commerce, WEB: Last Revised July 29, 2025.</ref>
In Indiana, the swamp extended into Allen County. In 1920, the census reported Allen County had 4,221 farms, and their "Value of All Crops", excluding products from animals (ex: livestock, poultry), was $11,054,888 (unadjusted).<ref>CENSUS.GOV. "Agriculture: Indiana – Statistics For the State And Its Counties". Fourteenth Census of the United States: 1920 Bulletin, Bureau of the Census, Department of Commerce, 1921, pp. 12, 30.</ref> In 2022, the USDA census reported Allen County had 1,497 farms and $254,903,000 in crops sold, excluding animal products.<ref>USDA.GOV. "Census of Agriculture 2022 State and County Profiles – Indiana". WEB: National Agricultural Statistics Services, United States Department of Agriculture, 2022.</ref> In 1920, Allen County's total population was 114,303.<ref>CENSUS.GOV. "Population: Indiana – Composition and Characteristics Of The Population". Fourteenth Census of the United States: 1920 Bulletin, Bureau of the Census, Department of Commerce, 1921, p. 8.</ref> In 2020, it was 385,410.<ref>CENSUS.GOV. "Indiana: 2020 Census – Population and Housing". United States Census Bureau, Department of Commerce, WEB: Last Revised July 25, 2025.</ref>
In Michigan, the swamp extended into Lenawee and Monroe counties. The 1920 census reported both counties had 9,188 farms, and their "Value of All Crops", excluding animal products, was $21,878,825 (unadjusted).<ref>CENSUS.GOV. "Agriculture: Michigan– Statistics For the State And Its Counties". Fourteenth Census of the United States: 1920 Bulletin, Bureau of the Census, Department of Commerce, 1921, pp. 16–17, 32–33.</ref> In 2022, the USDA census reported both counties had 2,327 farms and earned $435,654,000 in crops sold, excluding animal products.<ref>USDA.GOV. "Census of Agriculture 2022 State and County Profiles – Michigan". WEB: National Agricultural Statistics Services, United States Department of Agriculture, 2022.</ref> In 1920, the total population for both counties was 84,882.<ref>CENSUS.GOV. "Population: Michigan – Number of Inhabitants, by Counties and Minor Civil Divisions". Fourteenth Census of the United States: 1920 Bulletin, Bureau of the Census, Department of Commerce, 1921, p. 5-6.</ref> In 2020, it was 254,232.<ref>CENSUS.GOV. "Michigan: 2020 Census – Population and Housing". United States Census Bureau, Department of Commerce, WEB: Last Revised August 25, 2021.</ref>
In 2022, the counties inside the former Great Black Swamp (13 in Ohio, 2 in Michigan, 1 in Indiana) earned a total of about $2.8 billion in crop revenues (excluding animal products) for their states' economies.
Restoring the swamp
Changing public perceptions
Public perception about wetlands and the environment has changed significantly in the 2020s, with increasing scrutiny for bias, stereotypes, and the glaring omissions of historical accounts. Public misinformation and misunderstandings about the Great Black Swamp include a 1982 WBGU-TV 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".<ref name="pbs.org">PBS.ORG. "The Story of the Great Black Swamp". WBGU Documentaries (online channel), PBS, 1982 (uploaded to PBS.ORG on February 2, 2010).</ref>
In March 2024, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) issued a press release warning the public about how the loss rates for U.S. wetlands has increased by 50% since 2009, and that wetland conservation is needed, stating, "wetland loss leads to the reduced health, safety and prosperity of all Americans".<ref>FWS.GOV. "Continued Decline of Wetlands Documeted in New U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Report". Press Release, Public Affairs HQ, United States Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Dept Interior, March 22, 2024.</ref> In April 2025, PBS Western Reserve released a short documentary about the Great Black Swamp and the importance of wetlands, stating, "the misunderstanding of what wetlands provide to nature poses the threat of continued loss."<ref>PBS.ORG. "Welcome to the Wetlands". By Nature's Design: Exploring Our Native Wildlife, PBS Western Reserve, WEB: April 22, 2025.</ref>
Wetlands are now better understood for their roles in flood control, sediment control, filtering nutrients, storing water during droughts, and providing habitats for plants and animals, boosting biodiversity and the health and safety of freshwater environments, local economies, and people. Wetlands sequester carbon and decrease atmospheric greenhouse gases better than carbon sink forests, and freshwater inland wetlands hold 10 times more carbon than coastal wetlands.<ref>Nahlik, A.; Fennessy, M. "Carbon storage in US wetlands". Nature Communications 7, 13835 (2016).</ref>
Restoring wetlands
Wetland conservation in the United States is supported by a variety of government agencies, communities, farmers, and non-profit groups devoted to protecting existing wetlands and restoring those that are lost or degraded. In the late 20th century, efforts gained momentum to restore wetlands to their presettlement state (e.g., Limberlost Swamp).<ref>Virginia B. Ball Center for Creative Inquiry. (n.d.). Limberlost Restoration. Our Land, Our Literature. https://digitalresearch.bsu.edu/landandlit/about_us/limberlost.html</ref> Following Lake Erie's harmful algal blooms in 2011, interest has grown in restoring portions of the drained Black Swamp.<ref name="Undark" /> William J. Mitsch called for the restoration of 150 sq mi (400 km2) of the original swamp.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> This would reduce phosphorus inflow from the Maumee River to Lake Erie by 40%.<ref name="Jiang-2024" />
The Olentangy River Wetland Research Park is a 52-acre facility dedicated to wetland science, research, and education, and advises local water resource management, conservation, and restoration projects. It features two experimental wetland basins, an oxbow wetland, bottomland hardwood forest, a mesocosm compound, laboratories, a classroom, offices, and meeting spaces.
Founded in 1993, the Black Swamp Conservancy protects 17,600 acres (7,100 ha) of former swamplands throughout northwest Ohio.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Their recent restoration project, the Clary Boulee McDonald Preserve, became the Seneca County Park in 2024. This site, located next to Wolf Creek, used to be beech forests and elm-ash swamp forests in the 19th century. The restoration establishes wildlife corridors and visitor trails.<ref>BLACKSWAMP.ORG. "160-acre Clary-Boulee-McDonald Preserve Becomes Seneca County Park". Press Release, Black Swamp Conservancy, Kansas, Ohio, September 12, 2024.</ref> The organization consistently collaborates with local farmers to ensure its restoration efforts benefit surrounding communities.<ref>BLACKSWAMP.ORG. "Flowing Forward – Black Swamp Conservancy 2023". Black Swamp Conservancy (YouTube Channel), Pemberville, Ohio, November 27, 2023.</ref>
The Oak Openings Region hosts preserves managed by The Nature Conservancy and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (Ohio DNR). The Nature Conservancy owns the Kitty Todd Nature Preserve (about 1,400 acres in Lucas County), an assemblage of oak savanna and restored wetlands. Early settlers avoided farming this area due to its sandy soil.<ref>NATURE.ORG. "Kitty Todd Nature Preserve". The Nature Conservancy, WEB: 2025.</ref> Historically, the region consisted of unique, varied vegetation, ranging from wet sedge meadow to wet prairie to oak savanna, sustained by wind-blown sand dunes and wetlands that cycled from wet (winter/spring) to dry (summer).<ref>OhioDNR.GOV. "Kitty Todd State Nature Preserve". Ohio Department of Natural Resources, WEB: 2025.</ref> The Ohio DNR manages former Black Swamp sites north of the Maumee River like Campbell State Nature Preserve, Irwin Prairie State Nature Preserve, and Goll Woods State Nature Preserve.<ref>OhioDNR.GOV. "Goll Woods State Nature Preserve". Ohio Department of Natural Resources, WEB: 2025.</ref><ref>OhioDNR.GOV. "Campbell State Nature Preserve". Ohio Department of Natural Resources, WEB: 2025.</ref><ref>OhioDNR.GOV. "Irwin Prairie State Nature Preserve". Ohio Department of Natural Resources, WEB: 2025.</ref>
Metroparks Toledo is another regional leader in wetland restoration, most notably through the creation of Howard Marsh Metropark. This restored wetland converted nearly Template:Cvt of historical agricultural land into a prosperous wetland that now boasts over half of the bird species found throughout Ohio.<ref>OhioDNR.GOV. "Howard Marsh Metropark". Ohio Department of Natural Resources, WEB: 2025.</ref> Pearson Metropark is another example of both a historic, old growth wet forest, paired with sections of restored wetlands.<ref>Markey, Matt. "Toledo's Metroparks a haven for birds and birders". The Toledo Blade, May 10, 2018: Retrieved December 5, 2019.</ref>
In 2024, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) completed a five-year restoration of 12 acres of coastal wetlands at Port Clinton in Ottawa County. According to the land surveys from the early 19th century, the area the USACE restored used to be freshwater fens and marshes, and also elm-ash swamp forests. Upon project completion, the USACE stated, "Wetlands are essential to the health of our Great Lakes".<ref>Schneider, Avery. "Great Lakes Coastal Wetland Revitalized on Ohio's Lake Shoreline". U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, WEB: October 11, 2024.</ref>
Preventing pollution
Fertilizers restore soil nutrients depleted by farming to maintain crop productivity. However, fertilizers and farm runoff also become pollution sources that fuel the growth of harmful algal blooms (HABs).<ref>EPA.GOV. "U.S. Action Plan for Lake Erie 2018-2023: Commitments and strategy for phosphorus reduction". U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, February 2018.</ref>
In 2014, HABs shut down Toledo's water supply.<ref name="Jiang-2024" /> The historic destruction of the Great Black Swamp, which once naturally filtered nutrients entering the lake, contributed to HABs and the eutrophication of Lake Erie.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Over $10 million were estimated in lost shoreline property value services, and over 500,000 Toledo residents could not drink the city's tap water for three days.<ref>FISHERIES.NOAA.GOV. "Hitting Us Where it Hurts: The Untold Story of Harmful Algal Blooms". NOAA Fisheries, WEB: updated September 25, 2024.</ref>
HABs threaten public health. Airborne HAB toxins can cause eye irritation, breathing problems, and trigger asthma attacks.<ref>OCEANSERVICE.NOAA.GOV. "What are the impacts of harmful algal blooms?". National Ocean Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, WEB: July 8, 2024.</ref> When cyanobacteria release powerful toxins such as microcystin and microcystin-LR, they can harm the human liver, worsen pre-existing colitis, exacerbate lung inflammation in asthma, and amplify the non-alcoholic fatty liver disease which is common in people living with diabetes.<ref>Linkhorn, Tyrel. "UToledo Leads Charge to Understand Health Effects of Harmful Algal Blooms". News Research, UToledo News, University of Toledo, WEB: July 18, 2024.</ref>
HABs hurt Ohio's economy. A 2017 study determined Ohio lakeshore homes can lose 22% of their value when located near algal-infested waters.<ref>Wolf, David; Klaiber, H.Allen. "Bloom and bust: Toxic algae's impact on nearby property values". Ecological Economics, Vol 135, May 2017, pp. 209–221.</ref> A 2018 study determined algal blooms in the Western Basin of Lake Erie could cost Ohio beach and fishing recreation $59.2 million and $5.3 million each year.<ref>Chen, Wei; Wolf, David; Gopalakrishnan, Sathya; Haab, Timothy; Klaiber, H. "The economic impacts of harmful algal blooms and E.coli on recreational behavior in Lake Erie". SSRN Electronic Journal, June 2018, 10.2139/ssrn.3352679.</ref> The International Joint Commission estimated Ohio lost $71 million in economic benefits from a 2011 HAB event, and lost $65 million from the 2014 event.<ref>IJC.ORG. "Like a Shark: Algae Eats Money in Lake Erie". Water Matters: International Joint Commission Quarterly, WEB: December 17, 2015.</ref>
In 2019, Governor Mike DeWine established the H2Ohio water quality initiative to prevent Lake Erie HABs by helping farmers reduce nutrient pollution and agricultural pollution. The program funds projects like two-stage ditches and wetland restoration to filter nutrients from farm runoff.<ref>Henry, Tom. "DeWine commits 5 million to two stage ditches through H2Ohio". The Toledo Blade, August 15, 2022.</ref><ref>Stinchcomb, Jon. "ODNR getting additional $5 million for H2Ohio wetlands projects". Port Clinton News Herald, September 2, 2020.</ref> In 2023, the Ohio Department of Agriculture awarded $4.2 million for ditch projects.<ref>H2Ohio. "ODA Awards Funding for H2Ohio Two-Stage Ditch Program". H2Ohio, March 2, 2023.</ref>
In July 2025, Gov. DeWine signed a budget bill approving House and Senate proposals for over $120 million in cuts to H2Ohio – a 45% reduction – that could potentially reverse progress in improving water quality.<ref>Rowley, Paul. "Farmers warn Ohio's water quality gains could slip without H2Ohio funding". Farm and Dairy, June 10, 2025.</ref><ref>Williams, Kylie. "Funding cuts could threaten Lake Erie toxic algae progress". Politico Pro, July 2, 2025.</ref>
In 2022, the Ohio EPA published a report using years of water quality data to identify cost-effective strategies for pollution control. It stated the Maumee watershed contributes the most phosphorus pollution to Lake Erie.<ref>OHIO.GOV. "Preliminary Modeling Results for the Maumee Watershed Nutrient Total Maximum Daily Load Development". Ohio EPA Technical Report, Division of Surface Water, Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, November 2022, p. 6.</ref> 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).<ref>OHIO.GOV. "Preliminary Modeling Results for the Maumee Watershed Nutrient Total Maximum Daily Load Development". Ohio EPA Technical Report, Division of Surface Water, Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, November 2022, p. 11.</ref> The report recognized pollution from cattle and hog units and concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), legacy phosphorus, and non-agricultural stormwater.
Conservation tillage practices (ex: no-till, ridge-till) aim to minimize soil disturbance, improve soil health, and reduce erosion by covering 30% of the soil with crop residues after planting.<ref>Carter, M.R. "Ch: Conservation Tillage". Encyclopedia of Soils in the Environment, edited by Daniel Hillel. Academic Press, 2005, 1:306–311. Template:ISBN</ref> However, such practices may increase the dissolved phosphorus in farm runoff entering ditches and streams, which can worsen when manure is applied to the soil.<ref>Osterholz, William et al.. "New phosphorus losses via tile drainage depend on fertilizer form, placement, and timing". Journal of Environmental Quality vol. 53,2 (2024): 241–252. doi:10.1002/jeq2.20549</ref> Without streambank erosion control, these new phosphorus sources combine with "legacy phosphorus" (older phosphorus deposits stored in the banks of ditches and streams), and complicate restoration efforts.<ref>Williamson, Tanja & Fitzpatrick, Faith & Karwan, Lare & Kreiling, Rebecca & Blount, James & Hoefling, Dayle. "Source and longevity of streambed sediment and phosphorus retention in a lake-plain tributary of the Maumee River". Journal of Great Lakes Research, Vol 51, issue 3, June 2025, 102575.</ref>
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.<ref>NRCS.USDA.GOV. "Wetland Reserve Easements (WRE)". Natural Resources Conservation Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2025.</ref> Other programs include denitrifying bioreactors, and drainage water management known as "controlled tile drainage".<ref>USDA.GOV. "Bioreactors Form a Last Line of Defense Against Nitrate Runoff". U.S. Department of Agriculture, WEB: February 26, 2016.</ref><ref>NRCS.USDA.GOV. "Drainage Water Management". U.S. Department of Agriculture, WEB: July, 2022.</ref> Controlled tile drainage manages the drainage volume and water table elevation by regulating the flow from a surface or subsurface farm draining system.<ref>NRCS.USDA.GOV. "Drainage Water Management (Ac.)(554) Conservation Practice Standard". Natural Resources Conservation Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, August 2023.</ref> This method can significantly reduce growing season fluxes of stream water ammonium nitrogen, nitrate nitrogen, dissolved reactive phosphorus, and phosphorus.<ref>Sunohara, Mark; Gottschall, Natalie; Wilkes, G.A.; Craiovan, Emilia; Topp, Edward; Que, Zee; Seidou, Ousmane; Frey, Steven; Lapen, D.R. "Long Term Observations of Nitrogen and Phosphorus Export in Paired-Agricultural Watersheds Under Controlled and Conventional Tile Drainage". Journal of Environmental Quality, July 2015, DOI: 10.2134/jeq201501.0008.</ref>
The USDA and NRCS utilize a voluntary Edge-of-Field Monitoring network across northwest Ohio's 4.5 million-acre Maumee River watershed to measure and manage phosphorus runoff.<ref>Coulon, Chris. "Working Together to Improve Water Quality Along the Lake Erie Shore". U.S. Department of Agriculture, WEB: August 21, 2014.</ref> Installed at field edges, the equipment analyzes water from tile drains and surface runoff to quantify nutrient loss.<ref>Upper Midwest Water Science Center. "Edge-of-field monitoring". U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Department of the Interior, WEB: April 11, 2019.</ref> This helps farmers optimize fertilizer timing and placement.<ref>NRCS.USDA.GOV. "Edge-of-Field Monitoring: Ohio Network". U.S. Department of Agriculture, WEB: January 2021.</ref> This data allows participating farmers to make better-informed decisions that maximize yields and conserve resources.<ref>Overstreet, Amy. "Ask the Expert: A Q&A on Voluntary Edge-of-Field Water Quality Monitoring with Karma Anderson". U.S. Department of Agriculture (Farmers.gov website), WEB: August 11, 2022.</ref> The network provides essential validation data for scientists to refine numerical models, ensuring conservation practices protect future water quality and farmland.<ref>Williams, Mark R.; King, Kevin W.; Ford, William; Fausey, N.R. "Edge-of-field research to quantify the impacts of agricultural practices on water quality in Ohio". Journal of Soil and Water Conservation, January 2016, 71, 9A-12A, DOI: "10.2489/jswc.71.1.9A".</ref>
The Ohio Department of Natural Resources (Ohio DNR), USDA, and NRCS assist farmers with windbreaks and other soil conservation methods to prevent wind erosion, thereby improving stream water quality.<ref>OhioDNR.GOV. "Northwest Ohio Windbreak Program". Ohio Department of Natural Resources, 2025.</ref><ref>FARMANDDAIRY.COM. "Northwest Ohio: Windbreak program halts gales". Farm and Dairy, May 15, 2003.</ref> Government agencies and farming communities work to mitigate the loss of productive soil, recognizing each lost ton as a financial loss for farms and a significant loss of essential nutrients (a ton of optimal soil contains 2 lbs of nitrogen, 9 lbs of phosphorus, and 31 lbs of potassium).<ref>Tubaugh, Amanda. "The True Cost of Soil Erosion". Farm and Dairy, June 1, 2023.</ref>
The swamp was a major carbon sink (peatlands) until agriculture turned it into a carbon source.<ref>EPA. "Sources of Greenhouse Gas Emissions". Environmental Protection Agency, March 31, 2025.</ref> This contributes to greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) like methane and nitrous oxide. Farmers mitigate GHGs by studying agricultural emissions for denitrification and decomposition to improve nitrogen cycle and phosphorus cycle management.<ref>Steinbeck, Garrett et al. "Modeling the effects of management practices on soil greenhouse gas emissions and nutrient content for a corn-soybean system". Ohio State University, Dept. of Food, Agricultural, and Biological Engineering, 2020</ref> Other measures involve storing atmospheric carbon in farm vegetation and soils.<ref>Sweitzer, Baylee. "Ohio farmers try out early carbon sequestration programs". Kent State News Lab, Kent State University School of Media and Journalism, January 26, 2023.</ref>
A 2013 study analyzed the perspectives of farmers in the Maumee 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 many perspectives from the farmers, including how they perceive nutrient control measures, how they often have to prioritize "economic over environmental risk", and the financial and personal risks they take in running a farm.<ref>Wilson, R.; Burnett, L.; Ritter, T.; Roe, B.; Howard, G. "Farmers, Phosphorus and Water Quality: A Descriptive Report of Beliefs, Attitudes, and Practices in the Maumee Watershed in Northwest Ohio". The Ohio State University, School of Environment and Natural Resources, 2013, p. 18 (p. 19 in PDF)</ref>
Personal risks in farming that require greater public attention include risks to both physical health and mental health (such as farmer's lung and suicide).<ref>OHIO.GOV. "Ohio Farmer Stress and Wellbeing Report". Ohio Agricultural Mental Health Alliance, September 2024.</ref><ref>AGRI.OHIO.GOV. "Farm Stress? We've Got Your Back". Ohio Department of Agriculture, WEB: 2025.</ref><ref>WOODCOUNTYHEALTH.ORG. "Addressing Farmer Mental Health: Insights on Ohio Agricultural Mental Health". Wood County Health Department, WEB: 2025.</ref><ref>OHIOLINE.OSU.EDU. "Respiratory Impairment in Agriculture". Ohio AgrAbility Fact Sheet Series (Ohioline), Ohio State University Extension, WEB: November 8, 2013.</ref>
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.<ref>EPS.GOV. "EPA Selects Four Organizations to Receive $3.7 Million in Grants to Assist Farmers with Nutrient Management in Western Lake Erie Basin". U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (Press Release), Region 5, June 25, 2025.</ref>
Industrial pollution, PCBs, and PAHs in the Ottawa and Maumee Rivers compromise water and public health.<ref>EPA.GOV. "Maumee AOC (Area of Concern)". U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, WEB: March 7, 2025.</ref><ref>13ABC.COM. "Wood County road crews prevent industrial wastewater from flowing to Maumee River". WTVG 13 Action News, WEB: March 11, 2025.</ref><ref>Ohio EPA. "Maumee AOC". Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (YouTube channel), WEB: October 7, 2020.</ref><ref>EPA.GOV. "Maumee AOC Latest News (2021)". U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, WEB: January 19, 2021.</ref> In 2024, five companies paid $7.2 million for polluting in the Maumee watershed.<ref>APNEWS.COM. "Five companies agree to pay $7.2 million for polluting two Ohio creeks". Associated Press, WEB: January 8, 2024.</ref> In 2025, Campbell's admitted to years of polluting the Maumee River.<ref>Ferrise, Adam. "Campbell's Co. admits to years of polluting Maumee River, Lake Erie at Ohio canning facility". CLEVELAND.COM, WEB: September 16, 2025.</ref> Contaminants of emerging concern also harm the environment, and cause population declines of threatened and endangered freshwater species.<ref>Roznere, Ieva; An, Viktoriya; Robinson, Timothy; Banda, Jo; Watters, G. (2023) "Contaminants of emerging concern in the Maumee River and their effects on freshwater mussel physiology". PLOS ONE. 18. e0280382. 10.1371/journal.pone.0280382.</ref>
Agricultural groups have pursued legal action, claiming Clean Water Act regulations have neglected to prevent Lake Erie farm pollution, especially from CAFOs.<ref>Rowley, Paul. "Ohio ag groups want to enter legal battle over Lake Erie pollution". Farm and Dairy, WEB: October 17, 2024.</ref> The growth of CAFOs in the former swamp region greatly contribute to nutrient pollution, and require serious manure and fertilizer management.<ref>Smith, D.R., Macrae, M.L., Kleinman, P.J.A., Jarvie, H.P., King, K.W. and Bryant, R.B. "The Latitudes, Attitudes, and Platitudes of Watershed Phosphorus Management in North America". Journal of Environmental Quality, Vol. 48, Issue 5, September 2019, pp. 1176–1190.</ref><ref>EWG.ORG. "Explosion of Unregulated Factory Farms in Maumee Watershed Fuels Lake Erie's Toxic Blooms". Environmental Working Group (EWG), April, 2019.</ref>
Wildlife conservation
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Biodiversity has suffered significantly due to the loss of the Great Black Swamp. Species threatened with extinction include the spotted turtle, which has declined significantly over the years.<ref>Cleveland Museum of Natural History. "Giving Spotted Turtles a Head Start". YouTube Channel of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. July 13, 2017.</ref><ref>Lewis, T.; Ullmer, J.M.; Mazza, J.L. "Threats to Spotted Turtle (Clemmys guttata) Habitat in Ohio". OHIO Journal of Science, 104 (3):65–71, 2004.</ref><ref>Refsnider, JM; Carter, SE; Diaz A; Hulbert, AC; Kramer, GR; Madden, P; Streby, HM. "Macro- and Microhabitat Predictors of Nest Success and Hatchling Survival in Eastern Box Turtles (Terrapene carolina carolina) and Spotted Turtles (Clemmys guttata) in Oak Savanna Landscapes". Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 9:788025, 2022, doi: 10.3389/fevo.2021.788025.</ref> The copperbelly water snake has suffered significant population losses. Today, this species inhabits just 50 km2 (20 sq miles) of remnant swamp forest in Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana, with experts estimating that only 40 to 100 individuals remain.<ref>Wagner, Ryan. 'They aren't mean and they aren't trying to get you': saving the copperbelly water snake. The Guardian, February 14, 2023.</ref><ref>Roe, J.H.; Kingsbury, B.A.; Herbert, N.R. "Comparative water snake ecology: conservation of mobile animals that use temporally dynamic resources". Biological Conservation, Vol. 118, Is. 1, June 2004, pp. 79–89.</ref><ref>Roe, J.H.; Gibson, J.; Kingsbury, B.A. "Beyond the wetland border: Estimating the impact of roads for two species of water snakes". Biological Conservation, Vol. 130, Is. 2, June 2006, pp. 161–168.</ref><ref>USFWS. "Copperbelly Watersnake Northern Population Segment (Nerodia erythrogaster neglecta) 5-Year Review: Summary and Evaluation". U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Ohio Ecological Services Field Office, Columbus, Ohio, September 27, 2023, pp. 1–15.</ref> The piping plover, the loggerhead shrike, and the northern harrier are other species that need protection, and are considered endangered in Ohio.<ref>Ohio DNT. "Ohio's Listed Species. Pub 5356 (R0924). Ohio dept. Natural Resources. September 2024.</ref> Wetland conservation projects focus on restoring habitats to suit the needs of these species.
Black bears were extirpated in most of Ohio by the 1850s, and the last one in the Great Black Swamp (Paulding County) was killed by 1881. They were rediscovered in the State in the 1970s, having entered from Pennsylvania and West Virginia. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources (Ohio DNR) has been conducting surveys, estimating the current population at 50 to 100 bears. Most of the black bear sightings occur along the borders with Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Only four sightings were recorded between 1993 and 2022 in the former Great Black Swamp region (Fulton and Seneca counties).<ref>OhioDNR.GOV. "BLACK BEAR: Overview – Research and Surveys". Ohio Department of Natural Resources, WEB: Update 2023.</ref> The Ohio DNR lists the black bear as an Endangered Species in Ohio and bans hunting them.
The sandhill crane was extirpated in Ohio by the early 20th century, but has slowly made a comeback. Most recently, the Ohio DNR, the International Crane Foundation, and the Ohio Bird Conservation Initiative counted 184 sandhill cranes across the former Great Black Swamp region (Fulton, Lucas, Ottawa, and Sandusky counties) during the 2023 and 2024 during nesting seasons.<ref>OhioDNR.GOV. "Ohio's Spring 2024 Sandhill Crane Count Results". Ohio Department of Natural Resources, WEB: May 22, 2024.</ref> The Ohio DNR lists them as threatened.<ref>Ohio DNR. "Ohio's Listed Species". Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Publication 5356 (R0924), September 2024.</ref>
Hunting and habitat loss decimated 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. Despite the Ohio Bird Records Committee believing the species deserved inclusion on the Ohio list of historic bird species, its historic presence cannot be confirmed due to poor record keeping in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including lost/destroyed photographs, documents, crane skins, and even cranes stuffed by taxidermists.<ref>Whan, Bill. "Return of the Exile: Whooping Crane Grus Americana". Ohio Cardinal (magazine), Vol 35 (2011), Iss. 4, Art. 4, Summer 2012, pp. 146–149.</ref> Whooping cranes are rarely sighted today, either in the former swamp region or the rest of Ohio.<ref>TOLEDOBLADE.COM. "Rare cranes visit Ohio". The Toledo Blade, April 18, 2004.</ref>
Indigenous peoples descended from northwest Ohio, today
Indigenous peoples in the United States refer to themselves as American Indians or Native Americans, with preferred usage depending on the individual.<ref>BIA.GOV. "Why are American Indians and Alaska Natives also referred to as Native Americans?". Bureau of Indian Affairs, Department of the Interior, WEB: August 19, 2017.</ref><ref>AMERICANINDIAN.SI.EDU. "The Impact of Words and Tips for Using Appropriate Terminology: Am I Using the Right Word?". Native Knowledge 360 Degrees, National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian, WEB: 2025.</ref> This preference extends to the names of their nations: Wyandot, Chippewa, Seneca, and other groups who called the Great Black Swamp region home, that land which shaped their languages and cultures for millennia before European contact.
After centuries of U.S. government mishandling the Indian reservation system and initiatives like the Indian Relocation Act of 1956, Indigenous peoples are securing the return of thousands of acres of ancestral land taken in the 19th century. The September 2023 addition of Ohio's Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks to the UNESCO World Heritage Site list encourages these efforts. In October 2023, the Native American Indian Center of Central Ohio raised funds to purchase rural land for Native American life and activities.<ref>Starr, Stephen. "A sense of home: Native American land rights grow in industrial midwest". The Guardian, November 23, 2023.</ref>
A 2024, a 12-episode podcast, The Ohio Country, premiered on WYSO radio to discuss Ohio Indigenous history, highlighting how tribal descendants are reviving their languages and renewing their cultures, and working to restore their historic bonds to Ohio.<ref>Martin, Heather. "New WYSO podcast tells Ohio history from Indigenous perspective". Ohio Humanities, WYSO, WEB: June 27, 2024.</ref> Indigenous people who previously returned to Ohio include Mother Solomon, who moved from Wyandot territory in Kansas back to Upper Sandusky, Ohio, in 1865.
Stories shared by Indigenous descendants of northwest Ohio directly challenge historical denials, such as the 1982 WBGU-TV PBS documentary's false claim that Indigenous peoples abandoned the Great Black Swamp due to mosquitoes and fear of the land.<ref name="pbs.org"/> Historical records confirm Indigenous groups did not willingly leave the swamp region; they were forcibly removed by the U.S. government under the Indian Removal Act. Even Charles Dickens noted their deep reluctance to leave their lands and the graves of their loved ones when he met them in 1842.<ref name="Dickens, Charles 1870"/> They opposed removal because Northwest Ohio and the swamp region had always been their home. They were forced from Ohio by overcrowded steamboats, wagons, horseback, or by walking the entire way to Indian Territory west of the Mississippi River.<ref name="Built on Broken Promises">Wingo, Rebecca. "Built on Broken Promises". Ohio Humanities, WEB: October 10, 2022.</ref>
Government betrayals continued: when the Wyandot people arrived in Kansas in 1843, they learned they would not be fully paid for the lands they sold to the U.S. government, and that the land the government had promised them in Indian Territory did not exist.<ref>KCKPL.ORG. "Wyandot History: Wyandot Migration Trail (1850–1857)". The Kansas Collection, Kansas City Kansas Public Library, WEB: 2025.</ref><ref>ARCHIVES.LIB.KU.EDU. "Papers concerning the Wyandot Tribe of Ohio who were forced to relocate to Kansas Territory in 1843", Kansas Collection, RH MS 382, Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas, WEB: 2004–2019.</ref>
Efforts are underway in the 2020s to return an estimated 6,500 Indigenous remains in Ohio museums and collections to their respective nations for reburial, as mandated by the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA).<ref>Fields, Asia; Hudetz, Mary; Jaffe, Logan; Ngu, Ash. "The Repatriation Project: the Delayed Return of Native Remains". ProPublica (series), May 17, 2022.</ref><ref>Martinez-Smiley, Adriana. "An Ohio nonprofit holds 6,500 Indigenous remains. Tribal leaders want to rebury them". WYSO 91.3 FM, March 26, 2025.</ref> Because of constant construction projects breaking ground, efforts to identify possible Indigenous graves are ongoing in northwest Ohio.<ref>Kunze, Jenna. "Potential Burial Sites Found in Northwest Ohio". Native News Online, WEB: February 22, 2022.</ref><ref>Sigov, Mike. "Former school on Indian burial ground likely to be razed, but site preserved as green space". The Toledo Blade, WEB: April 29, 2025.</ref> In 2003, human bones dating to 1600 B.C.E. (over 3,600 years old), found at an Ottawa County construction site in the former Great Black Swamp, were given a reburial ceremony led by four indigenous people from the Five States Alliance of First Americans.<ref>CLEVELAND19.COM. "Ancient bones found at construction site reburied". Cleveland 19 News, WEB: October 22, 2003.</ref>
In August 2025, NAGPRA's inventory recorded a total of 1,257 Indigenous remains recovered from 9 counties within the former Great Black Swamp region: Allen County (66 remains), Fulton County (13 remains), Hancock County (2 remains), Henry County (3 remains), Lucas County (5 remains), Ottawa County (490 remains), Putnam County (3 remains), Sandusky County (634 remains), and Wood County (41 remains).<ref>NPS.GOV "Inventories, All Human Remains, Geographic Origin: Ohio". Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, WEB: updated August 25, 2025.</ref> In March 2025, the National Park Service and the U.S. Department of the Interior completed an inventory of Indigenous human remains from Wood County, identifying at least 1,399 individuals and 4,661 associated funerary objects dating back centuries.<ref>FEDERALREGISTER.GOV. "Notice of Inventory Completion: Ohio History Connection, Columbus, OH". Federal Register: The Daily Journal of the United States Government, WEB: updated March 17, 2025.</ref>
Indigenous nations from the Great Black Swamp and other Lake Erie regions suffered the psychological trauma of losing their ancestral lands and burial places.<ref>Johnston, D. "Connecting People to Place: Great Lakes Aboriginal History in Cultural Context". Ipperwash Commission of Inquiry, July 2004, p. 24.</ref> These graves were central to their cultural and spiritual beliefs, representing a sacred bond with their ancestors that was violently severed. American history and government leaders have consistently minimized, dismissed, and ignored this historical trauma. Increasing public awareness and education about Indigenous history in Ohio and the Great Black Swamp helps restore a more complete memory of the state's past.<ref name="Built on Broken Promises"/><ref>OHIO.EDU. "Eastern Shawnee Nation: Civilization and Representation". Ohio's First Humanists: Native Americans from Mound Building to Modern Voices, Ohio University, WEB: 2025.</ref>
Legacy of the swamp
The loss of wetlands like the Great Black Swamp drives wetland conservation movements nationally and globally. Georgia's Okefenokee Swamp and its 402,000 acre refuge were recently saved from a proposed mine for titanium dioxide and other minerals. In June 2025, a conservation group purchased the mining site on Trail Ridge for $60 million, effectively ending the project.<ref>Bynum, Russ. "Conservation group makes $60M land deal to end mining threat outside Okefenokee Swamp". Associated Press, June 20, 2025.</ref> In 2022, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had reversed its approval for the mine because the mining company failed to properly consult with the Muscogee (Creek) Nation.<ref>Connor, Michael L. "Final Rosemont Mine & Twin Pines AJD Memo". Department of the Army, Office of the Assistant Secretary, Civil Works, June 3, 2022.</ref> The Muscogee inhabited the region until the Indian Removal Act. "Okefenokee" in their language means "shaking waters in a low place."<ref>U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. "Frequently Asked Questions: Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge and Twin Pines Mine". U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, April 2024.</ref>
Indigenous traditional ecological knowledge is gaining recognition for its benefits in land and nature management, offering a critical alternative to commercial resource exploitation.<ref>Robbins, Jim. "How Returning Lands to Native Tribes is Helping Nature". Yale Environment 360, Yale School of the Environment, June 3, 2021.</ref><ref>McGovern, Susie; Iturbide-Chang, Maria Jose. "Indigenous people pave the way for sustainable water resource management". Hoosier Environmental Council, November 22, 2024.</ref><ref>Wilson, N.J.; Inkster, J. "Respecting water: Indigenous water governance, ontologies, and the politics of kinship on the ground". Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 1 (4), July 25, 2018, pp. 516–538.</ref> To support protection efforts, the National Association of Wetland Managers and the U.S. EPA publish handbooks guiding States and Indigenous nations on wetland management.<ref>Bostwick, Peg; et al. "Wetland Program Plans Handbook". National Association of Wetland Managers, The Association of State Wetland Managers, September 2013, WEB: "Tribal Wetland Programs" Web App Explorer, 2025.</ref><ref>NAWM.ORG. "Protecting Waters and Wetlands in Indian Country". U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, December 2022, EPA 840B21005.</ref>
Recent legal challenges, such as the 2023 Supreme Court ruling in Sackett v. EPA, have created obstacles for U.S. wetland protection by focusing on private land-use rights. A 2025 report by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) argued the Sackett ruling threatens to remove protections for tens of millions of acres of existing wetlands, leaving them vulnerable to pollution and destruction.<ref>Devine, Jon; Lee, Susan; McKinzie, Matthew. "Mapping Destruction: Using GIS Modeling To Show The Disastrous Impacts of Sackett V. EPA On America's Wetlands". Natural Resources Defense Counsel (NRDC), New York HQ, R:25-03-B, March 2025.</ref>
Development threatens global wetlands, including the Congo Peatlands, the world's largest tropical peatland swamp. It covers 16.7 million hectares (41 million acres), and stores 30 billion metric tonnes of carbon.<ref>Crezee, B., Dargie, G.C., Ewango, C.E.N. et al. "Mapping peat thickness and carbon stocks of the central Congo Basin using field data". Nature Geoscience, 15, 639–644 (2022).</ref><ref>Garcin, Y., Schefuß, E., Dargie, G.C. et al. "Hydroclimatic vulnerability of peat carbon in the central Congo Basin". Nature 612, 277–282 (2022).</ref> In 2025, the Democratic Republic of the Congo launched bids for oil and gas drilling rights within the Peatlands.<ref>Weston, Phoebe. "Gorilla habitats and pristine forest at risk as DRC opens half of country to oil and gas drilling bids". The Guardian, July 29, 2025.</ref> A growing logging industry, some of it illegal and financed by foreign entrepreneurs, threatens to destroy the Peatlands' biodiversity and to complicate the lives of the peoples who have inhabited the region, and have called it home, for countless centuries.<ref>Maclean, Ruth; Kabanda, Caleb. "What Do The Protectors of Congo's Peatlands Get in Return?". Headway, The New York Times, February 21, 2022.</ref>
BGSU's Center for Great Lakes and Watershed Studies addresses critical water issues affecting Ohio, Lake Erie, and the former Great Black Swamp region.<ref>BGSU.EDU. "Our Mission". "About Us", Center for Great Lakes and Watershed Studies, WEB: September 19, 2025.</ref> In October 2025, WBGU-TV PBS interviewed scientists from the center to discuss Ohio water protection, wetland restoration, and applying their research to global water issues.<ref>PBS.ORG. "BGSU Center for Great Lakes and Freshwater Studies". The Journal (season 27, episode 11), WBGU-TV PBS, WEB: October 9, 2025.</ref>
As the shallowest and warmest of the Great Lakes, Lake Erie is experiencing more frequent harmful algal blooms (HABs). Increased organic nitrogen input encourages Microcystis blooms and toxin production.<ref>Stark, Anne M. "Unexpected source of nutrients fuels growth of toxic algae from Lake Erie". Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, WEB: May 30, 2024.</ref> Rising temperatures are causing HABs to last longer.<ref>Dick, Gregory. "Toxic algae blooms are lasting longer in Lake Erie − why that's a worry for people and pets". News, School for Environment and Sustainability, University of Michigan, WEB: June 27, 2025.</ref> To manage these threats, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) monitors HABs, utilizing satellites, field observations, models, buoys, and public health reports.<ref>RESEARCH.NOAA.GOV. "New forecast tool provides advance warnings of low oxygen levels in Lake Erie". NOAA Research, WEB: July 16, 2024.</ref> NOAA provides hypoxia forecasts to alert decision-makers to cold, hypoxic upwellings near the shore.<ref>OCEANSERVICE.NOAA.GOV. "What can we do about harmful algal blooms?". National Ocean Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, WEB: July 8, 2024.</ref><ref>COASTALSCIENCE.NOAA.GOV. "Lake Erie Harmful Algal Bloom Forecast". National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, WEB: 2025.</ref> Such comprehensive measures are essential due to the lack of wetlands and increasing pollution.
See also
- Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge
- Atchafalaya Basin
- Biebrza National Park
- Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge
- Carolina Bays
- Cedar Point National Wildlife Refuge
- Cuvette Centrale
- Danube Delta
- Draining of the Mesopotamian Marshes
- Everglades
- The Fens
- Ginini Flats Wetlands Ramsar Site
- Great Cypress Swamp
- Great Dismal Swamp
- Great Meadow, Ukraine
- Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge
- Hawizeh Marshes
- Kopuatai Peat Dome
- Limberlost Swamp
- Mer Bleue Bog
- Mountain Bogs National Wildlife Refuge
- Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge
- Okavango Delta
- Okefenokee Swamp
- Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge
- Pantanal
- Pocosin
- Prairie Pothole Region
- Sandhills (Nebraska)
- Sundarbans
- Sunkhaze Meadows National Wildlife Refuge
- Tulare Lake
- Zekiah Swamp
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Further reading
- Abel, Timothy J.; Burke, Adrian L. "The Protohistoric Time Period in Northwest Ohio: Perspectives from the XRF Analysis of Metallic Trade Materials". Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology, 39(2): 179–200, DOI: 10.1179/2327427113Y.0000000007.
- AG.PERDUE.EDU "Purdue Soil Fertility". Purdue University, WEB: July 3, 2025.
- Banner, Stuart. How the Indians Lost their Land: Law and Power on the Frontier. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005.
- Baskin, John. New Burlington: The Life and Death of an American Village. Norton & Company, W.W., 1976.
- Bowes, John P. Land Too Good for Indians: Northern Indian Removal. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016.
- Brock, C; Jackson-Smith, D; Kumarappan, S.; Brown, C. "Farmer and Practitioner Conceptions and Experiences with Soil Balancing". Ohio State University, 2019.
- Crosby, Alfred. Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
- Fenn, Elizabeth A. Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775–82. New York: Hill and Wang, 2001
- Finley, James. History of the Wyandott Mission, at Upper Sandusky, Ohio. Cincinnati : Pub. by J. F. Wright and L. Swormstedt, for the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1840.
- Finley, James. The Autobiography of Reverend James B. Finley. Edited by W.P. Strickland, D.D., Cincinnati: The Methodist Book Concern, 1858.
- Grieser, O.; Beck, E. Out of the Wilderness, History of the Central Mennonite Church, 1835–1960, The Dean Hicks Company, Grand Rapids Michigan, 1960.
- Jones, Robert Leslie. The History of Agriculture in Ohio to 1880. Kent State University Press, 1983.
- McDonnell, Michael A. Masters of Empire: Great Lakes Indians and the Making of America. New York: Hill and Wang, 2015.
- Ostler, Jeffrey. Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2019.
- Oviedo, Gonzalo; Ali, Mariam Kenza. The Relationship of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities with Wetlands. RAMSAR Convention on Wetlands, August 2018.
- Prince, Hugh. Wetlands of the American Midwest: A Historical Geography of Changing Attitudes. University of Chicago Press, 1998.
- Sampson, Homer C. "Succession in the Swamp Forest Formation in Northern Ohio." The Ohio Journal of Science 35, no. 2 (1930): 340–357
- Saunt, Claudio. Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2020.
- Sprunger, Christine, et al. "Which Management Practices Influence Soil Health in Midwest Organic Corn Systems?" Agronomy Journal, vol. 113, 2021, pp. 4201-4219.
- Stockwell, Mary. The Other Trail of Tears: The Removal of the Ohio Indians, Westholme Publishing, 2014.
- Stothers, David M. "The Protohistoric Time Period in the Southwestern Lake Erie Region: European-Derived Trade Material, Population Movement and Cultural Realignment." In Cultures before Contact: The Late Prehistory of Ohio and Surrounding Regions, edited by Robert A. Genheimer. Columbus: Ohio Archaeological Council, 2000.
- Stothers, David M. and Timothy J. Abel. "Beads, Brass, and Beaver: Archaeological Reflections of Protohistoric 'Fire Nation' Trade and Exchange." Archaeology of Eastern North America 19 (1991): 121–134.
- Ulbrich, T. C., et al. "Unpacking Farmers’ Understanding of Soil Health: Mixed Methods Show Strong Convictions, Yet Management Hurdles". Journal of Soil and Water Conservation, 2025, pp. 1–17.
External links
- Black Swamp Bird Observatory, a nonprofit promoting bird conservation.
- The Black Swamp Conservancy, an organization dedicated to preserving the swamp.
- Original Natural Vegetation of Ohio ArcGIS interactive map. The Natural Vegetation of Ohio, at the Time of the Earliest Land Surveys by Robert B. Gordon, Ohio Biological Survey, 1966.
- Michigan Natural Features Inventory Vegetation circa 1800 ArcGIS interactive map. Michigan State University, MSU extension.
- Presettlement Land Cover IDNR 2016. Indiana Geographic Information Office, Indiana State Government.
- "New WYSO podcast tells Ohio history from Indigenous perspective". Ohio Humanities, WYSO.
- Ohio's Listed Species. Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Publication 5356 (R0924).
- Center for Great Lakes and Watershed Studies, a research center at Bowling Green State University.
- Northern Forest Atlas, an organization that documents the current biology of forests and wetlands.
- Introduction to Wetlands, Northern Forest Atlas, February 4, 2017.
- "Restoration of historic Great Black Swamp could help save Lake Erie Henry, Thomas, The Toledo Blade, September 22, 2017.
- "Swamp forests". Forest Film Studio, an organization producing nature documentaries, swamp wetlands episode on YouTube channel: October 7, 2022.
- Welcome to the Wetlands. By Nature's Design: Exploring Our Native Wildlife, PBS Western Reserve, April 22, 2025.
- "Renaturalisation of wetlands slows global warming and species decline". Euronews, an international news organization, wetland report on YouTube channel: August 20, 2025.
- "18th Century Vegetation of Ohio". Ohio Department of Natural Resources, WEB: October, 2025.
- BGSU Center for Great Lakes and Freshwater Studies. The Journal (season 27, episode 11), WBGU-TV PBS, October 9, 2025.
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