On the trail to Beaver Marsh in Cuyahoga Valley National Park, I see two gentlemen engaged in a conversation about something they see with their cameras’ telephoto lenses. Without a request, one of the men offers me his binoculars and tells me where to look to find two wood ducks perched on a log across the creek. It takes a minute because the ducks are so well camouflaged. I manage to locate only one.
The marsh, once a junkyard of polluting car parts, old mattresses and miscellaneous trash, is today a thriving, biodiverse home to beavers, frogs, snapping turtles, and local and migrating birds. This watery habitat is blanketed by cream-colored water lilies that bloom fully in the summer.
We can’t help noticing the number of hikers and cyclists traversing the boardwalk that crosses the marsh. It’s a popular, well-used route, mostly because of the park’s proximity to metro Cleveland, Ohio, population 2 million-plus.
Cuyahoga (pronounced ky-a-HO-ga) Valley National Park (CVNP), 20 miles long and six miles wide, was created expressly as an accessible resource for a large urban/suburban population. Its unique history includes many milestones and developments. Zoom to 1974 when a patchwork of 33,000 acres was designated a national recreation area; in 2000, the area graduated to national park status.
On today’s map, CVNP’s green expanses are sprinkled with white patches that represent private residences, housing tracts and the town of Peninsula, location of a storybook depot for the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad.
Features like the Beaver Marsh are not hard to find, as most are not far from Riverview Road, the main artery that bisects north and south the park’s 51 square miles. The thoroughfare roughly follows the path of the Cuyahoga River, responsible for creating the valley and many of the park’s other features — waterfalls, rock formations, geological layering, flora and fauna.
About 25 miles of the 100-mile river flow through the park. Looking at it now, it’s hard to imagine that this river once bore the dubious designation as the country’s filthiest, so polluted that it caught fire 14 times. The last time, June 1969, spearheaded the country’s environmental movement and spawned the Environmental Protection Agency and Clean Water Act.
Thanks to both public and private efforts, the river enjoys new life that benefits a variety of species, including the human kind. It also has been designated an official Ohio Water Trail.
“The Cuyahoga is one of the most kayakable rivers in the country,” says an energetic, gray-haired volunteer guide at the park’s Boston Mill Visitor Center, who adds that he has “been with the park since the beginning.”
He pulls out a newsprint map and points out some of the park’s most popular stops in the southern portion: Beaver Marsh; Everett Covered Bridge; Hale Farm & Village; The Ledges; the Village of Peninsula, which prides itself on its sustainable policies that “remove the sources of pollution (like sewage) from entering the Cuyahoga River”; and Brandywine Falls.
We make a beeline to the upper viewpoint for this 60-foot-high, cascading falls via a sturdy boardwalk that takes visitors on a short, verdant journey. Those who can navigate multiple stairways can follow the longer, lower boardwalk, which provides the best photo viewpoint. (There also is a wheelchair-accessible route to the upper viewpoint.)
The falls’ bridal-veil effect is created by shale, soft rock that was formed from mud found on the floor of the sea that covered this part of northeast Ohio 300 million to 400 million years ago. Today the waterfall attracts tourists because of its beauty, but early settlers viewed it as a source of power. Visitors can see the remnants of a grist mill just beyond the end of the upper-falls boardwalk. The falls also powered a woolen mill and a sawmill.
Local environmental enthusiasts say that CVNP should serve as a national model for protecting, restoring and transforming open spaces and waterways near urban areas that once were considered beyond saving.
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