Articles

A History of Cedar Bog and the Cedar Bog Association

From documents written by Terry Jaworski, Melanie Pratt,
and other individuals as well as the Ohio Historical Society
A special note: in the May-June issue of the Ohio Historical Society's "Timeline", there is an article on E. Lucy Braun, who spent her life studying prairie plant species, and her sister.

The place we call Cedar Bog is a small scrap of a once, much larger wetland. Since the end of the last ice age, many of the Native American cultures have lived around the wetland. We know this for we find their flint tools at their former campsites. They were the first human discoverers of the place we call Cedar Bog. The European settlers knew also this place we now call Cedar Bog. They used the steady stream as an energy source for their water-driven machinery.

Other types of explorers, from the 1830s on, were looking for the new plants that the wetland held. They collected the plants, such men as John Samples, Milo G. Williams, William S. Sullivant, and women researchers such as Hannah J. Brittlecomb and E. Jane Spence collected the mosses, liverworts and lichens. In 1894 Dr. William A. Kellerman, the first botany professor at the Ohio State University, published the first list of the plants from Cedar Bog.

Alfred Dachnowski in the next decade wrote a description of Cedar Bog. Dachnowski noted that Cedar Swamp, as it was known then, was originally 7,000 acres in size and it was now reduced to 600 acres. He predicted that Cedar Swamp would be gone soon.

However, the Murdoch family of Champaign County had other ideas. Starting with an inheritance, a mother and daughter, Florence Carlisle Murdoch and Florence Murdoch, began to save a portion of the wetland. From their small, inherited holding in the 1880s, with an addition of 40 acres purchased for back taxes in 1910, the ladies began saving Cedar Bog. For more than fifty years they held onto the land and prevented further draining.

The great drought of the mid-1930s inspired another group from Springfield and Urbana to save the bog. The Ohio Legislature passed over this expenditure because they were building Kiser Lake State Park and there was only so much money to go around.

But this was difficult for they were living in Cincinnati. With the passing of her mother, Miss Florence had let ownership of the land be passed to her niece and her husband who lived in Champaign county. The husband decided the best thing to do was clear the trees and pasture Western cattle on the land.

In the spring of 1941 Miss Florence Murdoch appeared in the office of Edward S. Thomas at the Ohio Historical Society. She was very upset. For more than fifty years, Miss Florence, and her mother, Mrs. Florence Murdoch, had watched over, added land to, the Cedar Swamp in Champaign County. The new owners had proposed to cut down the trees, and sell them, and pasture the land in Texas longhorn cattle.

To make a long story short, a group of Springfield and Urbana people had been trying since 1936 to get the State to purchase the land as a preserve. But it was the middle of the Depression, and the purchase money was not available. It looked like the Cedar Swamp was doomed.

In late 1941 our country was experiencing an uneasy peace. It was a time of gaining prosperity. The Depression was on the wane but events around the world were making it hard for America to remain out of what a war that was seen as "none of our business". A chance meeting with Ohio Governor John Bricker put Dr. Thomas into action, and with the help of Governor Bricker, Champaign Common Pleas Judge Marion Owen, and others, the state Board of Control voted to spend $4,438.50 and purchase 88 acres of wetland in Champaign County from the Burnside family. The money was released on October 24, 1941 and the deed for the land was transferred on April 23, 1942. By this time, America was at war. The rest, as has been said many times, is history.

The tumultuous decade of the 1960s brought to the edge of Cedar Bog a proposed new four-lane highway. In that same decade Clara May Frederick completed her dissertation on the flora of Cedar Bog. Dr. Frederick's dissertation was an eye-opener for many. From 1968 to 1972 a group of bog supporters, the Friends of Cedar Bog, worked to change the location of the highway or just to stop it.

The resulting controversy and publicity brought hordes of visitors to the Bog. A boardwalk was built, then rebuilt ten years later. In 1982 a new friends group was started - The Cedar Bog Association.

Today the highway has a new route. The bog and its support groups look forward to the education building and to a new chapter in the history of this natural wonder.

Since the State of Ohio acquired the first one hundred acres of Cedar Bog for the Ohio Historical Society in 1941, the Nature Conservancy and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources have helped with the purchase of additional parcels. Concerned individual citizens and observation organizations worked to preserve the area and to develop the boardwalk that winds carefully through the Bog's special habitats to allow visitors to experience all the bog has to offer.

The Cedar Bog Association was founded on October 26, 1982 by a group of thirty-six people. Dr. Charles C. King, then Director of the Ohio Biological Survey, gave the keynote address. The constitution and bylaws of the organization were written by Ralph Ramey, Terry Jaworski, and Rob Liptak in the Glenn Helen Building at Glen Helen. The purpose of the Association was to be a support agency for the Nature Preserve.

The Association has had four presidents: Mr. Robert Liptak 1982-5, Dr. Clara Mae Frederick 1985-88, Maj. Ralph Doerzbacher, 1988-2001, and Mrs. Zara Liskowiak who has served from 2001 to the present. The Association has also published a newsletter since 1982 that is sent to the membership to keep them updated on the political affairs that affect the bog and on special events that the Association hosts at Cedar Bog.

The Constitution of the Association has three defined possibilities for support of the preserve. The Association may lease the nature preserve from the Ohio Historical Society, hire and salary an Executive Director. The Association may purchase properties and hold them on behalf of the nature preserve. The Association may raise funds and hold them on behalf of the nature preserve.

The Association has also defined support in a multitude of other ways. Primary has been the funding of continuing education for Cedar Bog staff. The Association has also paid the total cost of attendance to conferences covering a wide range of topics from prairies to rattlesnakes and butterflies when the Ohio Historical Society was not financially able. Association members have also volunteered to watch the booth when the staff are away at conferences.

Another major support activity has been the ability of the members to act as lobbyists on behalf of the preserve and the Ohio Historical Society. The building of the new boardwalk in 1985; the diversion of US 68, Phase I, away from the Bog 1992-2001; and the 2.3 million dollar Education Center are examples of this effort.

Support has also included funding and providing labor for special events. The Association helped to host the 1985 Ohio Prairie Conference, the 1987 Champaign and Logan County Boy Scout Camp In, the Earth Day Celebration in April, Fall events that have various titles, and even manned an excursion stop for the Great Ohio Bicycle Adventure.

Several special projects, such as the publication of Cedar Bog Symposium II and III and four Eagle Scout projects for the preserve have also been partly funded by the Association. One Eagle scout project lasted over a year and maintained a rapidly deteriorating boardwalk until funds could be secured to rebuild with all new materials. The Association totally funded and erected the National Natural Landmark rock at the entrance of the trail, thanks to a generous gift from Mr. Leonard Zerkel and some careful labor from Ralph Doerzbacher. The Association also contributed funds to the wheel chair rails that now line the boardwalk as a memorial to Carolyne Ramey.

The Association purchased and maintains the computer system at Cedar Bog and for a few years paid for the internet access as well as maintaining a website, www.cedarbog.org, the first website for any of the Ohio Historical Society sites. The Association purchased a tent, a radio communications system for the preserve, and a GPS instrument.

In 1992, the fiftieth anniversary of the purchase of the land for the preserve, the Association organized and conducted a fund raising campaign to supply the Ohio Historical Society with operation money to keep Cedar Bog open following some sever state budget cuts. The Association raised three times the amount needed, $7,500, in 6 weeks. This made Cedar Bog the first site out the seven slated for temporary closing to have acquired all the funds necessary to stay open.

Today, the site is a 428-acre preserve, a National Natural Landmark, that is an exceptional outdoor nature laboratory for students, scientists, and nature lovers of all ages. The Ohio Historical Society, in partnership with the Cedar Bog Association and the Division of Natural Areas and Preserves of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, has undertaken an initiative to develop the Cedar Bog Education Center, to take advantage of the many unique educational opportunities offered at the Bog. The Education Center was scheduled to open in Spring 2004.

But this project is in danger. State budget problems have made it impossible to receive enough funding for the building to be built. Currently meetings are being conducted to find a way to acquire more money for the project or to alter the plans to allow the building to be built for less, but problems have risen and the entire project has been delayed in favor of other Ohio Historical Society projects.