Clear Creek Metro Park is a nature preserve located at 185 Clear Creek Road in

Rockbridge, Ohio Rockbridge is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in eastern Good Hope Township, Hocking County, Ohio, United States. It has a post office with the ZIP code 43149. It is located at the interchange of U.S. Route 33 a ...

, just off U.S. Route 33. It is part of the

Columbus and Franklin County Metro Parks The Columbus and Franklin County Metro Parks are a group of 19 regional park, metropolitan parks in and around Columbus, Ohio. They are officially organized into the Columbus and Franklin County Metropolitan Park District. The Metro Parks system ...

system. It also contains the largest Ohio State Nature Preserve. Open 6:30 am until dark, the park is home to over 800 plant species and over 150 species of birds.

Geology

Clear Creek is located within the

Hocking Hills The Hocking Hills is a deeply dissected area of the Allegheny Plateau in Ohio, primarily in Hocking County, that features cliffs, gorges, rock shelters, and waterfalls. The relatively extreme topography in this area is due to the Blackhand Sand ...

region of Ohio, with gorges and bluffs formed by Blackhand sandstone. Because it is farther west than most other lands within the region, the erosion-resistant

sandstone Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate grains. Sandstones comprise about 20–25% of all sedimentary rocks. Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar (both silicates ...

occurs at higher elevations. The entire Metro Park area covers 5,470 acres as of 2019. It contains the 4,769-acre Allen F. Beck State Nature Preserve which has off-trail areas not normally open to the public, except for guided hikes and an annual hunting lottery. A number of trails also leads through most of the park area.

Activities

Clear Creek offers many activities, including hiking, picnicking, canoeing, fishing, nature programs, and a pet trail. Clear_Creek_Metro_Park_-_Near_the_western_entrance

Clear_Creek_Metro_Park_-_Near_the_western_entrance

History

In 1973, the Beck family from Columbus, who owned land in the Clear Creek Valley, gifted 1,159 acres of it to Columbus Metro Parks, with the stipulation that 75 percent of the land should be declared a state nature preserve. At the time the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had plans to flood the entire valley and build a large reservoir, and the Becks hoped a large nature preserve could prevent that. Emily Benua, who also owned land that would have been flooded, gifted another 662 acres to the State Nature Preserve in her will, under the condition that it "forever be held as a nature preserve for scientific, educational and aesthetic purposes". The plan for the reservoir eventually was scrapped, and in 1995 Clear Creek Metro Park officially opened to the public. Metro Parks had acquired additional land for a total of 3,800 acres by then (almost all of it nature preserve). By 2019, the parks system had made several more land acquisitions for a total of 5,470 acres.

References

{{Columbus and Franklin County Metro Parks Parks in Ohio Protected areas of Hocking County, Ohio Ohio State Nature Preserves Buildings and structures completed in 1995 Parks established in the 1990s Protected areas established in 1995 1995 establishments in Ohio