Great Black Swamp
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The Great Black Swamp, or simply Black Swamp, was a glacial swamp in Ohio and Indiana. It was gradually drained in the second half of the 1800s and is now fertile farm land.
Its historical boundaries lie primarily within the watershed of the Maumee River and stretched roughly from New Haven, Indiana in the west to near Sandusky, Ohio to the east.
Although much of the area to the east and north was settled in the early 1800s, the difficulty of traveling through the swamp delayed its development by several decades. A corduroy road (from modern day Fremont to Perrysburg) was constructed in 1825 and paved with gravel in 1838, but travel in the wet season could still take days or even weeks. In the 1850s an organized attempt to drain the swamp for agricultural use and ease of travel began, and the area was largely settled over the next three decades.
External links
- WBGU documentary site (http://wbgutv.bgsu.edu/local/past/gbs/about.html)
- Perrysburg history (http://www.historicperrysburg.org/history/swamp.htm)
- IPFW Black Swamp site (http://users.ipfw.edu/zeppp/Nature/swamp.html)
- PDF describing the Black Swamp (http://www.fowl.org/newsletters/nlmay02/PDF_images/The%20Great%20Black%20Swamp.pdf)
- Swamp Survivors (http://www.nwoet.org/swamp/swamp.htm)