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00000173-90ba-d20e-a9f3-93ba728f0000In 1940, the Federal Writers Project produced a massive book detailing the scenic treasures and everyday life along Ohio’s roads - roads that went through the big cities as well as through farmland and tucked-away places. Seventy years later, the roads have changed and the pulse of the people is different – in some places. Picking up where the Federal Writers Project left off, in 2012, the Ohio Humanities Council launched the Road Trip! radio series and The New Ohio Guide Audio Tours at SeeOhioFirst.org. This new guide takes those older routes and gives them a 21st century twist, recreating them as free downloadable audio tours, and the Road Trip! radio series.

New Ohio Guide: Oak Openings

Flickr Creative Commons user kcolwell
A boardwalk at Oak Openings, part of Toledo MetroParks

Just west of Toledo is the Oak Openings MetroPark, a 4000 acres site that preserves an amazing ecosystem of oak savannahs, abundant wildlife and extremely rare plant species.

"The Oak Openings to the untrained eye, looks an awful lot like a regular oak forest or perhaps just a wet area, the beauty of the Oak Openings is up close. Its not the first glance to get you it’s the second and the third and the fourth that draws you in," says nature photographer Art Weber.

Weber says the Oak Openings region is a blending of habitats that developed on sand deposited during the last ice age.

"What we have is a layer of sand overlaying clay. And where it’s thick, it’s very, very dry. And wherever the sand is thin it becomes very wet," says Weber. "This occurs all over the Oak Openings and as a result you have all of these super number of habitats very close together. Many of them supporting special animals, special plants, and as a result we have many, many rare species here."

"It is the epicenter of biodiversity in the state of Ohio without a doubt," says Bob Jacksy, a naturalist with MetroParks of Greater Toledo.

"There is more endangered species of plants here than anywhere in the State of Ohio There a greater variety of nesting songbirds than anywhere in the State of Ohio. A greater variety of butterflies than anywhere in the State of Ohio including the federally endangered Karner Blue Butterfly," says Jacksy.

"On the one hand you have many rare species which makes it special, but you also have lots of species that occur in different habitats that are very close together, so that’s unusual too," says Art Weber. "The Oak Openings itself what it really means is it's kind of forest but its not, and the openings are kind of prairie but they’re not. So what you have is this mixing and mingling of the eastern hardwood forest with the prairies of the west."

The Oak Opening Region is actually a mosaic collection of distinctly different habitats coexisting within a small area and probably most easily seen at the Girdham Road Sand Dunes.

"This is Ohio’s biggest living sand dune. And by living I mean it’s dynamic, the wind is still sculpting it. The prevailing wind comes from the west and it’s pushing the sand about 3 feet per year toward the east towards Toledo," says Bob Jacksy.

"The Sand dunes here are very dry, tough, sunny conditions, very harsh conditions. You go down a slope, down the other side of the dunes into a very cool wet area. You can find salamanders, amphibians that rely on a lot of water," says Art Weber.

"We have Oak Openings like we’re looking at now, we have pin oak flat woods which is a more wet habitat where the dominant tree is pin oak rather than the white and black oak that we’re seeing here. And we’ve got grass lands. If we look about half a mile away we can see the prairie grasses, acres and acres of prairie grasses," says Jacksy.

"There are other openings here that are wet sand prairies and those are even more rare globally," says Weber. "Nature Conservancy keeps track of things like this and they look at habitats all over the world, and they’ve called it “one the world’s last great places”, which puts it on a par with the Everglades and the Pacific Temperate Rainforest and some of the rarest habitats on earth, because it is one of the rarest habitats on earth."

"It has every bit the grandeur of the Everglades or Yellowstone and the difference is it’s smaller but its every bit as interesting. You could spend many lifetimes exploring this place and never get tired of it," says Jacksy.

Just in case you might want other areas to explore in the Oak Openings Region, the Kitty Todd, Irwin Prairie and Lou Campbell State Nature Preserves are also located nearby to protect more of this amazing ecosystem.

You can download this audio tour explore it on your own. It’s Tour Number 8. Natural Ohio. Our travel series ends next week but the tours live on at SeeOhioFirst.org where you can download a free tour and take it anytime. The New Ohio Guide is produced by the Ohio Humanities Council, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.