Great Parks of Hamilton County and The Nature Conservancy of Ohio are joining forces to "daylight" nearly two miles of streams on the site of a former golf course. The streams were channeled into culverts and buried more than 40 years ago during construction of the Shawnee Lookout Golf Course. The course closed in 2019.
In total, more than 9,000 feet of streams were moved into underground culverts, both on the site of the former golf course and elsewhere throughout Shawnee Lookout park. Now, the organizations are undertaking a 150-acre ecological restoration to bring that stream back to the surface. The work is being funded using the In-Lieu Fee Mitigation Program from The Nature Conservancy of Ohio. Great Parks will use its own funding to restore an additional portion of land.
Restoration work is slated to start this year.
"Shawnee Lookout is a historically significant site. It's an important archeological district, and the golf course highly altered that," explains Jessica Spencer, director of Natural Resources at Great Parks. "For the 40 years that [the golf course] was in existence, streams were actually buried underground, and some culverts were put in. This restoration will remove the culverts and the asphalt cart paths, establishing riffles and pools along the streams, as well as replacing invasive plants with a riparian buffer of native plants."
According to Spencer, the main stream runs east to west down the hill of the former golf course site. Tributaries come off the main stream to the north and south. The streams run into the Great Miami River.
"It's really important for water to be exposed to the surface so it can be better habitat for macroinvertebrates and wildlife like fish. Daylighting the stream allows the water to reconnect to the floodplain, and just be better for all the wildlife," says Spencer.
Teams will plant 24,000 native trees and shrubs, too, to create more habitat for birds and other wildlife.
"This area has undergone significant changes over the last several decades, including being used for farming and as a golf course," says Bill Stanley, state director of The Nature Conservancy in Ohio, in a statement. "Now, Shawnee Lookout presents a unique opportunity to uncover and restore buried streams, native plants and a strong forest canopy."
As an important archaeological district, Spencer notes the organizations are also working with the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma. The site was continually inhabited for 10,000 years by various Indigenous communities. It was given the name Shawnee Lookout by author and playwright Allan Eckert, who, among other notable works, wrote the outdoor drama Tecumseh! that's been produced for more than 50 years in Chillicothe.
"We also consulted on the project's boundaries and if there were any areas we wanted to avoid. This would include not just intact archaeological sites but any sites we deem sacred within the park, like Earthworks," says Logan York, kaakiihsitaakia/Tribal Historic Preservation Officer with the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma. "Consultation and involvement are ongoing for the project, and we will continue to be involved at Shawnee Lookout going forward."
Great Parks estimates the stream restoration should be finished by the end of fall 2025, with the additional work — like creating a 2-mile natural surface trail with a more gentle slope than the asphalt cart path — taking two to three years to complete.
Great Parks' master plan also calls for a new nature and education center, 8.4 miles of new trails, an amphitheater and outdoor classroom, new picnic shelters, a bird blind, and nature playground.
In 2021, the Metropolitan Sewer District completed a much larger project that included daylighting a stream — the long-buried Lick Run. That area is now a popular park and walking path through South Fairmount known as the Lick Run Greenway.
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