The Great Black Swamp

“Water! Water! Water!” wrote an early surveyor of northwestern Ohio, “tall timber! deep water! Not a blade of grass growing or a bird to be seen50.” The surveyor was traveling in the Great Black Swamp, a forty mile swath stretching from the western end of Lake Erie nearly to Fort Wayne – an area as large as the Everglades, at its former natural extent51x52. But unlike the Everglades, much of the Great Black Swamp was covered by broad leaf trees53. Great oaks, elms, ashes and others formed a thick canopy that kept the forest floor in darkness. For most of the year the land lay in water, or ice, and for the summer in black muck. At the last of the Ice Age, the Wisonsinan Glacier worked to create this water-holding area54. The glacier built up ridges around its edges, and left behind a lake, which in turn left behind the thick layer of clay at its bottom. The ancient lake also left its beaches as sand ridges, that Indians later used to cross the swamp. While crossing, one might have seen some of the plentiful wildlife, such as boar, bobcat, black bear and timber wolf55. Just northwestward of the swamp ran the Maumee river, where the Indians dwelt amid bountiful fishing and hunting, and fertile lands that they turned into great corn fields56.