It was just a spot on the CBC map, but it had a singular allure: an old unused quarry lake, hidden behind a shopping center. We have only a few large bodies of water in the Columbus Circle, so I had to check it out. To get there, though, required climbing through a brushy ravine filled with mud and wrecked cars, then up a slippery slope. Later, CBC teams that traced this route called the mud “epic.” Boots were lost. But the quarry lake sometimes had lots of waterfowl, and often hosted a big flock of resting gulls when it wasn’t frozen.
Fast forward 10 + years. That scruffy ravine is now part of Columbus’ newest Metro Park: Great Southern. And the lake has been pumped and the Quarry has been re-started, so now that lake really is off-limits. Why would Metro Parks even consider this post-industrial area? Let’s look closer at the south Scioto River and talk about its past and what might happen down there.
Firstly, Great Southern is named for the shopping center it sits behind, along South High Street almost to the south crossing of I-270. The Metro Park actually has done a credible job of cleaning up its portion of the land, cleaning up dumped trash, removing some invasives, and planting some of the open areas in prairie. Here’s a recent video tour of open parts of the Metro
Park: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5inkUBke6I . A small trail system explores the tamed ravine and the upland fields, winding south to an overlook of a large flood-control lake. Does it attract wildlife? It’s the only significant greenspace in this area, and had been a haven for gulls, raptors, flocks of starlings, robins, sparrows, and other birds even before the Metro Park stepped in. We even had potential breeding Blue Grosbeaks there for a few summers.
Historically, the area along the Scioto River from Berliner Park south to Great Southern had been an industrial area. There are still several active quarries run by big names in Columbus – Anderson Concrete, Shelly Materials, Olen, Kokosing – and there is a railroad line that tracks along the east side of the river near the old Columbus Canal that would ferry stuff from Columbus to Circleville and back, which you can see in this old photo: https://digital-collections.columbuslibrary.org/digital/collection/ohio/id/16398/rec/117 You can still see the old pylons of a railroad spur bridge that formerly crossed the Scioto in Berliner Park, the southern end of which was part of our old sewage plant (before it was consolidated a half mile further south in a larger site along Jackson Pike).
The main recent industry here was quarrying limestone and gravel for concrete. The Scioto River is the lowest part of the County, which means the limestone layer is closest to the surface. Look at any map of Columbus and you’ll see old quarry lakes scattered all along the Scioto from San Margherita south to Circleville. Some of the northern ones have been turned into fancy waterfront offices, apartments, and condos, but the ones south of downtown are still too industrial and in-use to be gentrified. In a way, the industrial nature of the area helped to preserve it – Scioto Audubon Metro Park, Berliner Park, and Great Southern are all old industrial sites.
But will they stay industrial? If the history of other quarries is any indication, they will steadily move south. Already some of the biggest are south of I-270. The more northerly ones will run low on limestone and gravel, and the land will become more valuable for other uses. The Metro Parks have seen this most clearly, partnering with a developer to leverage land for Quarry Trails Metro Park. The cheaper land south of downtown has allowed them to create three parks along the river south to Grove City, and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5inkUBke6IColumbus Rec & Parks also has some parkland here too. In fact, a plan has already been proffered to link Scioto Audubon, Berliner, and Great Southern by bike path, part of which would use the old Canal route. For a summary of the plan, see https://columbusunderground.com/proposed-trail-would-provide-new-south-side-connections-including-to-new-metro-park-bw1/ Eventually, they are trying to link this park up with Scioto Grove Metro Park to the south, but that will be further in the future. Despite its industrial past, this river frontage has been a good corridor for wildlife, and all of these parks will only strengthen that trend. We need to help this trend along; the vision of a series of large natural areas strung along the Scioto River is too beneficial to ignore.