Green gifts: Nature thrives at city's River Cliff and Redhorse Bend parks
“There! A wild turkey! A hen.”
Adam Saylor was calling my attention to a stand of knee-high prairie grasses backed by a lush patch of blooming milkweed. The milkweed itself was festooned with fluttering monarch butterflies.
The turkey, her neck stretched out over the grasses, was giving us the wary parental eye. She had been seen another time with seven young ones, poults, in tow.
It was a thrill to see, especially since the encounter occurred right on the edge of greater Fremont during an informal nature survey of Sandusky County’s new River Cliff Park. A wild turkey in town. Who would have thought?
The addition of two river parks was a field of dreams
The Perrysburg-based Black Swamp Conservancy (BSC) and the Sandusky County Park District (SCPD) certainly were open to such possibilities, for sure. Bringing nature to the public is what they do. And here they had cooperated to provide the community with a marvelous natural area along the Sandusky River — itself designated Ohio’s second state scenic river in 1970. It was a Field of Dreams moment: if you build it, they will come.
Saylor, stewardship supervisor for the park district, was leading the outing, which also included a look at another wonderful natural area, Redhorse Bend, a work-in-progress just downstream just from the Fremont Yacht Club. It is another BSC-SCPD partnership. This new park, former farmland and floodplain, lies beneath either side of the U.S. 20 bypass bridge over the river.
Together, River Cliff and Redhorse Bend provide area residents and visitors almost 2 miles of prime, scenic riverine green space. They are rich with birds, from a wide array of seasonal migrant songbirds, shorebirds, and wading birds to soaring bald eagles. Too, there are white-tailed deer and a host of other wildlife. And those wild turkeys.
River Cliff’s streamside quickly has become the new go-to venue for the annual, popular spring walleye and white bass spawning runs. Such public access is hard to come by in Ohio.
It took grants and local pledges to push project along
It all was a green gift to the community, the purchase and development backed by and thanks to state Clean Ohio and H2Ohio grants engineered by BSC. In addition, the Fremont Rotary Club, not missing a natural golden opportunity with River Cliff, has stepped up with a sizeable pledge of $250,000 to help renovate the clubhouse of the former Thornwood Golf Course into River Cliff Rotary Lodge, a coming $1.5 million community showpiece and gathering site.
The lodge building also now houses the park district’s new headquarters, thanks to $350,000 on renovations paid for through a 1-mill property tax levy approved by voters in 2016.
“Folks in Fremont really needed (green space) linking fishing access with other natural features,” said Melanie Coulter, BSC conservation manager.
The River Cliff parcel is well into conversion from manicured golf course back to natural habitats. It already features winding, mowed prairie paths and three miles of stoned trails through now-established prairie plantings and existing wooded riverside, from its upstream border with the Haunted Hydro property on downstream to the flood control dike that marks the boundary with Rodger Young Park. Tree plantings of such native tree species as swamp white oak, near Rodger Young, will be staged later.
In 2017 the conservancy secured $902,000 for River Cliff
“Black Swamp purchased 80 acres in 2017 with $902,000 in grant funds from the Clean Ohio Fund's Green Space Conservation Program,” said Coulter. “Less than two months after acquiring the property, we gifted it to Sandusky Parks, leaving them in control of transforming the site from a golf course into a public park with restored native habitats.”
The prairie area, some 15 to 20 acres at the park entrance next to the Haunted Hydro site on Tiffin Street in Ballville Township, has been rich with summer wildflowers. Patches of yellow-petaled black-eyed Susans, purple coneflowers, eight-foot-tall yellow-petaled cup plants, deep-orange butterfly weed, Indian grass, sunflowers, big and little bluestem grasses, milkweed, spike-shaped mullein plants and more provide a burst of seasonal color. Heavy seeding of colorful native prairie wildflowers was done on purpose, Saylor said, to draw attention and visitors. Not to mention the attention loads of springing grasshoppers, dozens of familiar orange-and-black monarch butterflies and other nectaring butterflies, bees and other pollinator insects.
“It will have pretty showy color through late August,” said Saylor. River Cliff already “is very popular with birders. It also is one of the really hot spots for the walleye and white bass runs, and it is popular with canoeists and kayakers. A lot of people use the trails for walking and running.”
Taking out the Ballville Dam opened more fishing options
Changes in state fishing rules, following elimination of the Ballville Dam in 2018, allow angler access beyond Rodger Young Park and Walsh Park across the river. This area had been off-limits in the spring fish runs. Now schools of anglers wade and cast off the River Cliff banks. In addition, a $40,000 grant from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources will enable construction of a canoe/kayak launch ramp alongside the main parking lot, likely yet this year.
Saylor said that River Cliff includes 0.82 mile of river frontage, between Haunted Hydro property and Rodger Young. Across the river at the park’s lower end lie the famous Blue Banks clay cliffs, a private property featuring several with historic Native American sites. This well-known, prominent geologic feature provides the “cliff” in River Cliff.
“River Cliff is an ideal acquisition for the Sandusky County Park District,” said Andrew Brown, park district director. “Not only is it right outside of the City of Fremont, it offers a multitude of recreational opportunities.”
The second natural gift to the community is Redhorse Bend Park, named after the redhorse, a member of the sucker family of fish that has its own spring runs in the river.
Saylor said it will be at least a year for public access there, but hiking trails and more are in the offing. It traces 0.91 miles of wild riverfront.
“Redhorse Bend provides important migratory bird habitat,” said Coulter, noting that it is part of the natural river corridor to Lake Erie. “The north half floods much of the time. It lies in the lake-effect zone of the river. It was an obvious site to return to a wetlands.”
The higher ground south of the bridge already is a sea of planted prairie grasses and wildflowers. It is providing much-needed grasslands habitat for pollinator insects and potential nesting sites for such declining songbird species as eastern meadowlarks, dicksissels, grasshopper and vesper sparrows, bobolinks and others.
Redhorse Bend to become a birding, hiking mecca
It promises to become a birding and hiking mecca tucked down in the Sandusky River valley.
“Our staff drove by this property for years and couldn’t help but notice just how often it was flooded. This stretch of the Sandusky River is heavily influenced by Lake Erie and, since the farmland wasn’t productive because of the flooding, we knew it would be perfect location to improve water quality,” said Rob Krain, executive director of BSC.
A key component of the H2Ohio program has been rehabilitation of riverine wetlands in the western Lake Erie watershed. They act as natural filters, a watershed’s kidneys for wayward fertilizer and pollutants.
Coulter said that BSC purchased 78 acres in 2015, with $527,000 in grant funds from the Clean Ohio Fund's Green Space Conservation Program. “We continued to lease for farming, while we pursued grant funds to pay for restoring the fields to native habitat. In 2018, an additional 15 acres were donated by Kraft-Heinz.
“We did not have success in getting a grant for restoration until H2Ohio came along, and in 2020 we received a $976,000 grant from that program to restore the 55 acres of the site that were in grain production. The end result was 28 acres of restored floodplain wetlands, 20 acres of prairie restoration, and 5 acres of stream-side reforestation. After restoration was complete, we transferred the property to Sandusky Parks in 2022.”
Biohabitats, Inc., of Cleveland, did the restoration.
Today, the formerly flooded farmland contains a variety of natural habitats including functioning floodplain and wetlands, according to the park district’s Brown.
About 10 to 12 acres of the north section floodplain already are wooded, including about 20 species of native trees in place, Coulter said, and additional plantings may include swamp white oak, bur oak, and white oak.
Other species will come back on their own quickly, such as cottonwood, hackberry, and red maple. “They will find their own way.”
Especially now that they have a new lease on life.
This article originally appeared on Fremont News-Messenger: River Cliff and Redhorse Bend parks on the Sandusky River
