The Wilds

At a glance

Overview

The Wilds is a nonprofit conservation center and safari park of nearly 10,000 acres in southeastern Muskingum County, west of Cumberland, built entirely on land that was strip-mined for coal. The hills were farmed after about 1807, then surface-mined in the 1940s and 1950s and again from the 1960s, much of it by American Electric Power's Central Ohio Coal Company, whose giant dragline Big Muskie worked the district from 1969 to 1991. In the late 1970s the state's zoos, two Ohio departments and private industry proposed turning reclaimed mine ground into range for endangered animals, and in 1984 the International Center for the Preservation of Wild Animals was incorporated and received about 9,154 acres from Central Ohio Coal. Przewalski's horses arrived in 1992, the park opened to tours in 1994, and since 2001 it has been managed with the Columbus Zoo. Today its grasslands, lakes and young forest on reclaimed spoil are also a field laboratory for studying how mined land recovers.

The name

The organization was incorporated in 1984 as The International Center for the Preservation of Wild Animals, Inc., doing business as The Wilds. (source)

Native American history

The Wilds' own history says Indigenous people lived on this land and built burial mounds on it, but it names no particular mound, people or period. The 1882 county history records a mound crowning the summit of High Hill in Meigs Township, the highest ground in Muskingum County at 1,375 feet, where branches of four creeks rise within 200 yards of each other. The county's name comes from the Muskingum River, perhaps from a Shawnee word for swampy ground or a Lenape word for a thorn bush; the popular reading 'elk's eye' is considered a folk etymology. No treaty, village or battle specific to the Wilds property was found in published sources.

• Burial mounds on The Wilds land: burial, The Wilds property (locations not published), prehistoric
• High Hill mound: mound, summit of High Hill, section 4, Meigs Township, prehistoric

Stories

Big Muskie

The best-known machine of southeastern Ohio's strip mines was Big Muskie, a Bucyrus-Erie 4250-W dragline, the only one ever built, owned by American Electric Power's Central Ohio Coal Company. It stood 22 stories tall, weighed about 13,500 tons, and its 220-cubic-yard bucket could hold two Greyhound buses side by side. It ran on 13,800-volt power from a trailing cable, worked around the clock with a crew of five, and walked on hydraulic feet at under two inches a second. From 1969 to 1991 it removed more than 608 million cubic yards of overburden. Falling demand for high-sulfur coal after the Clean Air Act and rising power costs ended its run, and in 1999 it was cut up for scrap on site. According to The Wilds, its final cut in 1991 was just east of the conservation center's land; Wikipedia says The Wilds was built on land Big Muskie stripped. (source)

From mine to range

By the mid-1970s the Ohio Zoological Commission was planning how the state could support its zoos, and by the late 1970s an idea had emerged to put endangered animals on reclaimed strip-mine land. The Ohio Departments of Natural Resources and Development, the state's zoos and private industry formed a partnership, incorporated in 1984 as the International Center for the Preservation of Wild Animals. That same year the Central Ohio Coal Company gave it about 9,154 acres of mined ground. The first animals, Przewalski's horses, arrived in 1992, two years before the first visitors. Instead of pens, animals were turned out onto pastures of thousands of acres on the graded spoil. (source)

A laboratory for mined land

Because its ground was mined and reclaimed under every era of Ohio's rules, The Wilds is used to compare how land recovers. Researchers from Denison University and The Wilds found parcels reclaimed before 1972, from 1972 to 1975, from 1976 to 1981, and after 1981, mostly cool-season grasses and non-native plants with shrubs and trees moving in. The oldest reclaimed sites had the greatest capacity to absorb light by 2016, while younger ones caught up with unmined land in 28 to 34 years. Nearly 280 hectares of the reclaimed ground have been planted since 1999 with warm-season prairie grasses such as switchgrass, Indian grass and big bluestem, kept up with periodic prescribed burns. (source)

Little Nannie Green

The 1882 county history tells this story of Nancy Green, later Mrs. David James and then Mrs. Nancy Bell, who at 92 was the oldest resident of Meigs Township. In 1798, in Venango County, Pennsylvania, her father left her, then ten, and her seven-year-old brother Tommy to hold a new claim cabin while he went to town, and he did not come back that night. Wolves, drawn by the remains of a deer dressed at the cabin, came howling to a doorway that could not be shut. Nannie told Tommy to hold on around her neck, climbed up to the rough joists, and sat there holding him against the wall while he slept until nearly morning. She later settled in Meigs Township and by 1882 had 12 children, 63 grandchildren and 75 great-grandchildren. (source)

Timeline

• 1807: Archibald Bowles of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, becomes the first white settler of Meigs Township, building a cabin on the east bank of Meigs Creek. (source)
• 1808-1810: Elijah Collins, Jacob Baker, John Bean and others settle on Collins' Fork of Wills Creek in the township's northeast corner. (source)
• 1828: Cumberland, the Guernsey County village beside the future Wilds, is platted; it gets a post office in 1829. (source)
• 1833: Casper Hollenbeck builds Meigs Township's first brick house, a hotel on the Zanesville and Marietta road. (source)
• 1873: State geologist E. B. Andrews describes the Cumberland coal seam, naming it for Cumberland, where it was the chief seam worked. (source)
• 1882: The county history reports five coal seams in Meigs Township, only two worked, and only for home use. (source)
• 1940s: Surface mining for coal begins on the land that is now The Wilds. (source)
• 1960s: After a pause in the 1950s, surface mining resumes on the property and continues for decades. (source)
• 1969: Central Ohio Coal's Big Muskie, a Bucyrus-Erie 4250-W dragline 22 stories tall with a 220-cubic-yard bucket, begins mining coal in the area. (source)
• 1972: Ohio's Strip Mine Law tightens reclamation requirements, followed by the federal Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act in 1977; parts of The Wilds were reclaimed under each era of rules. (source)
• Mid-1970s: The Ohio Zoological Commission begins planning support for the state's zoos, and by the late 1970s proposes using reclaimed mine land as wildlife range. (source)
• 1984: The International Center for the Preservation of Wild Animals is incorporated as a nonprofit and receives about 9,154 acres from the Central Ohio Coal Company, a subsidiary of American Electric Power. (source)
• 1989: The Johnson Visitor Center is completed with geothermal heating. (source)
• 1990: Work begins on the first animal facilities and fencing of the open range. (source)
• 1991: Big Muskie makes its final cut just east of what would become The Wilds. (source)
• 1992: Endangered Przewalski's horses become the first animals released into the pastures. (source)
• 1994: The Wilds opens to public tours. (source)
• 1996: The Wilds is accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. (source)
• 1999: Big Muskie is scrapped on site for about $700,000 in metal; its bucket goes to Miners' Memorial Park in Morgan County. (source)
• 1999-2016: Nearly 280 hectares of native warm-season prairie are planted on reclaimed ground and kept up with prescribed burns. (source)
• 2001: The Wilds enters a partnership with the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium. (source)
• 2007: The Carnivore Conservation Center opens. (source)
• 2009: The first recorded fourth-generation southern white rhino born in human care is born at The Wilds. (source)
• 2013: The Hellbender Conservation Center opens to help recover the eastern hellbender salamander. (source)
• 2016: What The Wilds calls the world's largest rhino herd barn opens. (source)
• 2018: The Wilds draws 119,132 visitors and supports 179 direct jobs, according to an Ohio University study. (source)
• 2025: Staff release 116 eastern hellbenders into native streams, and more than 100 bison raised at The Wilds are transferred to Tribal lands. (source)

Sources

• en.wikipedia.org: The Wilds (Ohio)
• en.wikipedia.org: Big Muskie
• en.wikipedia.org: Central Ohio Coal Company
• en.wikipedia.org: Cumberland, Ohio
• en.wikipedia.org: Muskingum County, Ohio
• thewilds.org: history
• thewilds.org: about wilds
• ohio.edu: wilds makes 15m regional economic impact according voinovich school study
• doi.org: jasmr19020052
• doi.org: jasmr17010015
• ohiojournalofscience.org
• kb.osu.edu
• archive.org: cu31924028848673 djvu.txt