Of the 12-15 significant old-growth forests in Ohio, two are within Cincinnati city limits.  The other is Caldwell Preserve:

 

http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php/topic,13196.msg193103.html#msg193103

 

 

Someone correct me if I've got any facts mixed up here.  As I understand it California Woods is on land purchased for the Cincinnati Waterworks back around 1830 which is why this area of forest was never logged.  Here is a link to a satellite image of the park:

 

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=cincinnati&ie=UTF8&ll=39.076376,-84.419074&spn=0.013726,0.033774&t=h&z=15

 

The waterworks located just upstream of the Little Miami in order to avoid future industrial pollution of that waterway which largely didn't happen.  Water is taken in on the Kentucky side of the Ohio and then travels in a tunnel dug by hand in the mid-1800's to settling pools which overlook the preserve.       

 

I only took a quick walk around the place, the biggest trees are near the entrance and along the one-lane road which parallels a creek.  This area has a magical character to it, the closest thing I've seen in Ohio to the old-growth sections of the Smokey Mountains.  Overall this preserve is less secluded than Caldwell Park, the noise from jets and less glamorous activity at Lunken Airport is a regular reminder of its urban location.  Like Caldwell Park, there are a lot of impressive old beech trees in these woods, a type of tree not seen frequently in the many reforested areas of Ohio.  Beech trees have an exotic character to them and it's a shame they're not more common. There is also a lot of moss on the older trees, and interesting tangles of vines growing on and around fallen trees, another mark of old-growth forest.         

 

Some of the impressive 200~ year-old trees lining the entrance drive off of Kellog Ave.:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A beech tree pushing 200 years in age:

 

 

 

 

 

This monster bass obviously swam up here after a long life in the Ohio River...he measured about 20 inches from his lips to his tail. 

 

 

 

 

 

Nice! Even before I started to read the text, the Beech trees in the first photo caught my eye. They're magnificent.

 

On our family farm there are about ten acres, maybe a little more, of marshy old woodland. There are many big old Beech trees there.

 

About 12 years ago a big Ash on the edge of the woods near the house was killed by lightning. It was over 100 feet tall, so we hired a tree service to take it down. Afterward, we counted a little more than 160 rings in the stump.

I suspect that beech trees are unpopular because they don't look impressive until they're really big.  Younger trees measuring 30ft. high have very sturdy trunks but they're hardly thicker than a baseball bat.  There are a lot of trees that start looking impressive by age 40, it seems that it takes 80 years before a beech tree gets big enough to where it really has a presence.   

 

 

I think this is a young beech tree here in the foreground, maybe 25 years old:

 

Someone who knows more about trees chime in. 

The term "monster bass" rules.

If I recall right beech has a somewhat acidic leaf, so in a grove of beech the understory is going to be somewhat thin, which gives a certain open feeling with mostly just the leaf fall and some minimal understory plant growth, especially if the stand of beech is surrounded by other growth.

 

 

Interesting stuff...that Bass truly is impressive.  :-o

Freakin' trees.

Here is a quick description of the old-growth forests in Ohio:

 

http://www.primalnature.org/ogeast/oh.pdf

 

This list includes 25 acres in Ault Park, which is news to me, meaning there are three old-growth forests in Cincinnati and a fourth in the county in part of Miami-Whitewater Forest.