Now that we are in our eighties, and after fifteen years in Southern Arizona, we moved to Ohio to be closer to family . We set out to explore our new surroundings and were surprised to discover some beautiful short hiking trails within fifteen minutes of home. In the photograph above, Lil stands at the entrance to a cave in the sedimentary rock ledges of our local metro-park.

Glacier Cave, Liberty Park

This is one of the many caves that are believed to have been used by American Indians in the area. Ohio’s first people, arrived around 16,000 years ago. They were nomadic hunter-gatherers and chose this area because of its high ground, proximity to water and wetlands and toolmaking resources. Artifacts found in this area indicate that later people used the land for gardening, and frequently changed encampments to precent overhunting and overfishing. Later, fur trade with the French brought the Wyandot, Seneca, and Ottawa Indians to the wetlands in the area to trap beaver and muskrat.

Mary Campbell’s Cave, Grove Trail, Cuyahoga Falls

A plaque nearby reads:

“In Memory of Mary Campbell who in 1759 at the age of twelve years was kidnapped from her home in Western Pennsylvania by Delaware Indians. In the same year these Indians were forced to migrate to this section where they erected their village at the big falls of the Cuyahoga. As a result, Mary Campbell was the first white child on the Western Reserve and this tablet marks the cave where she and the Indian women temporarily lived. Later, in 1764, she was returned to her home.”

While the story of Mary Campbell’s abduction and release some six years later is true, an archeological dig at the cave found no evidence that it had ever been used as a dwelling by American Indians.

Dammed section of the Cuyahoga River

This view just ustream from Mary Campbell’s Cave won’t last long. The sixty-foot high dam that was constructed a hundred years ago will be demolished this year and the river will return to its normal course and experience improvement in aquatic life.

Blue Henn Falls, Cuyahoga Valley National Park

A thirty-minute hike takes us to another beautiful location close to home. The fifteen foot waterfall gets its name from a ferocious bluish chicken that was bred when cock fighting was legal in the US. Legend has it that a local farmer found the carcass of a blue hen in the pool below the falls and named them after it. The Blue Hen chicken is the state bird of Delaware