Before I came to Oberlin for college, my mother made a point to remind me of our deep roots in the state of Ohio. She was born in Hillsboro, a small town in the southern region of the state. Her maternal grandfather was the city mayor, and I remember her telling stories about him going out every Saturday to collect coins from the parking meters. I presume it must have been one of his civil duties as the elected official, though it still makes me smile to think about. Her relatives on her father’s side were farmers; they cut off chicken heads and lived in an old farmhouse. These are the stories I associated with Ohio as a child growing up out of state, long before setting foot in Oberlin as a wide-eyed first-year navigating communal living and introductory film classes. 

I remember telling my high school friends in Pennsylvania about my big move to Ohio and being met with grimaces and offhand corn references. I have noticed a tendency for outsiders, myself included, to view Ohio with a sense of disdain, lamenting about the flatness and never-ending expanses of farmland, the politics and the rural lifestyle, the weather and ecological monotony. I am writing to ask students from other regions, as guests in this landscape, to shift toward a more nuanced and less judgemental mindset that defies the narrative outsiders have created about Ohio. As a white, transmasculine outdoor enthusiast who has benefited from settler colonialism, white privilege, and male-passing privilege, I acknowledge that my experience of Ohio can and does greatly differ from others’ experiences. While I carry certain privileges and biases that shape my experience of Ohio’s ecology, I hope to approach this topic with as much grace and expansiveness as I can. 

The name “Ohio” comes from the Iroquois word “O-Y-O,” translating to “the great river,” in reference to the Ohio river. Originally home to Native peoples predominantly belonging to eight Indigenous nations — the Chippewa, Ottawa, Delaware, Iroquois, Miamis, Mingo, Shawness, and Wyandots — Ohio is home to many culturally significant sites including earthworks such as Serpent Mound, Fort Ancient Earthworks, and Newark Earthworks, Hopewell burial mounds, and Miamisburg Mound. Today, the Cleveland American Indian Movement represents a major Indigenous activist group in Northeast Ohio that has worked to remove Native names and logos from schools statewide and promote Indigenous Peoples’ Day celebrations. In 2017, the City of Oberlin abolished Columbus Day and became the first city in Ohio to celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day as a city-wide holiday.

According to Thomas Fairchild Sherman, author of A Place on the Glacial Till, before settler colonialist powers crossed the Appalachian Mountains and entered into what is now referred to as southern Ohio from Virginia and into northern Ohio from New England, the land nurtured a sea of old-growth forest. Many Native peoples had been killed by European diseases by this point in time, and those who survived were harmed and displaced by the ecological, social, and political turmoil of Spanish, French, and English settlement. By the early 1800s, settlers from New England had begun to move into the woodland of Lorain County with the intention of developing farmland. Nearly half of the forests were cut down in less than 50 years, and by 1940, a mere 7 percent of the state maintained the original forest ecology.

Ohio has come to be known for being made up of farmland and cornfields, but this was not always the case, and fortunately, it is increasingly not the case. Today, about 30 percent of Ohio’s land area is forested again, though many of those forests are relatively young, restored lands. While national and state parks have their own slew of political and ecological issues, Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Mohican State Park, and Findley State Park, located not too far from Oberlin, are all beautiful spaces within the borders of Ohio that too often go unnoticed and unappreciated for their ecological splendor. 

The geology of this area is another relatively unknown asset of Ohio. Sherman notes that many of the most spectacular fish fossils found globally originated from the Devonian shale found in the Black River and Rocky River. These are both major water bodies just east of the Vermilion River, which began its own watery march after the continental glacier retreated from northern Ohio. For over two millennia, people planted crops and lived along the riverside, and the Vermilion River came to be utilized as a transportation route between Lake Erie and various villages in southern Ohio. The rock found in this area is striking in and of itself as well, reflecting the constant geologic change of Ohio. Popular geological landmarks include Hocking Hills State Park, Nelson-Kennedy Ledges State Park, and Rockbridge State Nature Preserve.  

I ask that visitors of this place, like myself, think and speak about Ohio with intention and recognize the beauty around us. But be careful; once you open your mind to Ohio, it might steal your heart.