Western Reserve Land Conservancy opens Oberlin Preserve boardwalk

OBERLIN — Nature lovers in Oberlin now have a new spot to visit. The city and Western Reserve Land Conservancy opened a new boardwalk and overlook at the Oberlin Preserve on Tuesday, built along an existing hiking trail and vernal pools and wetlands within the patch of longstanding wilderness. Andy McDowell, vice president of Western Field Operations, said the woods were first identified as a conservation priority in the late 1800s. More than 100 years later, The Western Reserve Land Conservancy acquired the 63-acre property in 2015. In 2021 the Land Conservancy created its Signature Parks and Preserves program, opening and managing six properties throughout Northeast Ohio for public access — including the Oberlin site. "It gives you more of an immersive experience to be out there and just absorb nature around you and the health benefits associated with it," McDowell said of the boardwalk. The property includes a prairie, with nearly 600 native wildflowers and 200 native trees, as well as the Oberlin Great South Woods. City Council President Bryan Burgess remembered running the woods as a child — when it was a truly overgrown wilderness before Reserve Avenue was put in. In the years since then, the city, Land Conservancy and other partners have worked to clear the paths and make them usable again. "Since then it's become one of the best-kept secrets in Oberlin," he said and was excited to add the boardwalk to the list of amenities there. Volunteers helped pre-drill the plastic and pressure-treated lumber for the walkway, toting them from Associate Field Director Kate Pilacky's home a few miles away to the site. She said the project was actually completed in October, but for the first time in 20 years the area was dry — and it didn't make much sense to have a grand opening without the wetlands and vernal pools living up to their name. The Oberlin Preserve was once owned by John and Delilah Copeland, free people of color who moved to Oberlin in the 1840s. Their son, John Anthony Copeland Jr., was involved in two significant anti-slavery events prior to the Civil War: the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue of 1858 and the raid at Harpers Ferry in 1859, for which he was later executed. The Western Reserve Land Conservancy maintains an Underground Railroad Freedom Garden on the north end of the property. Grants from Lorain County Public Health and the Ross Foundation funded the $20,000 boardwalk project. The boardwalk will eventually tie into a planned stretch of woodland trails coming from the open prairie through the woods. The Western Reserve Land Conservancy hopes to have the trails open by next summer, McDowell said, depending on funding. The proposed trail is a roughly $150,000 project, and the nonprofit will know later this year if its grant request was successful. Contact Carissa Woytach at (440) 329-7245 or cwoytach@chroniclet.com.