Gladys Riley Expansion

Article first published in the Arc’s 2023-2024 Newsletter

Expanding GLADYS RILEY PRESERVE - a place of water, wildflowers & light -

Gladys Riley Golden Star Lily Preserve has already garnered a well-deserved reputation as a state treasure, showcasing the rare golden star lily, rich spring wildflower assemblages, and the beauty of its rugged Appalachian hill country. The proposed expansion will add to the preserve’s priceless pedigree with important aquatic features that include 1) the final run of the Rocky Fork, a creek that dissects the existing preserve, 2) a long stretch of corridor bordering the Scioto Brush Creek - the first time the preserve will connect with this larger waterway; and rich floodplains associated with both waterways.

An application for the new addition has already been submitted to Clean Ohio for partial funding, and we eagerly await the results. If all goes well, future visitors will see the new parcel’s expansive floodplains, some of which are in soybeans, transformed into native prairie. Prairies provide fertile ground for summer wildflowers, bees, wasps, butterflies, and moths. The perennial vegetative cover afforded by the prairie’s presence will help restore a functioning floodplain to the Scioto Brush that catches sediment and nutrients while slowing down floodwaters.

The aquatic resources in both the Rocky Fork and Scioto Brush Creeks are exceptionally rich. Extravagantly colored and aptly-named fish – such as rainbow, greenside, and orange throat darters – flash through Rocky Fork Creek’s riffles, while ancient-looking mottled sculpins and blunt-nosed stonerollers skulk among the rocks below the water’s surface. Myriad fish, crustaceans, and aquatic insects call this major confluence of waters their home, each a vital link in the aquatic ecosystem’s chain of life.

The Rocky Fork tumbles northward out of the rock-strewn highlands of Scioto County’s sandstone and shale country before entering Scioto Brush Creek. Other major tributaries of Scioto Brush Creek wend eastward out of the dolomitic karst country of Adams County, mixing their waters. These waterways are perennially remaking themselves. One moment they are placid, burbling brooks; the next moment they are raging torrents - rearranging rocks, boulders, and trees and replenishing the lowlands with minerals, soil, and organic matter.

Each time the floodplains are bathed in floodwaters during winter and early spring, vernal pools bordering the creeks are recharged and replenished. As the pools warm under the March sun, they are transformed into rich aquatic soups of hydra, daphnia, cyclops, algae, water beetles, fairy shrimp, toad tadpoles and salamander larvae. This flush of life feeds higher animals yet, spreading nourishment in ever-expanding circles until even the larger birds and mammals are connected by the silken threads of common unity. The joining of the words “common,” meaning shared by more than one, and “unity,” meaning joined as a whole – is just another way of saying “community.” And saving natural communities is what the Arc of Appalachia is all about.

Fireflies thrive in the damp unmown fields of Gladys Riley where their prey - slugs, snails, and earthworms – flourish, and where the habitat is undisturbed by lights and pesticides. One of the highlights of the Arc’s Little Smokies Fireflies and Biodiversity Weekend’ held each June is the preserve’s bountiful populations of fireflies. All participants have to do is pull up a chair and sit back. Before them is the time-honored spectacle of thousands upon thousands of glimmering fireflies - covering fields and trees alike. Christmas light fireflies flicker-flash above the grasses, Light Bulb Fireflies light up the trees, Little Grays twinkle like laser lights in the grass, and Chinese Lanterns shimmer like falling embers above participants’ heads It is a mesmerizing light show.

The Arc’s master plan for Gladys Riley is to enlarge the parking lot and construct a new third trail in the preserve that will traverse what we aspire to be the newly acquired open bottomlands, a trail that will be especially appreciated during firefly season.

The Arc of Appalachia considers long-term profit when managing sites like Gladys Riley – exchanging the short-term debits of row-cropped fields with the long-term credits of prairies, functional floodplains, and creek corridors. Imagine what this preserve will look like 50, 100, or 150 years from now.

Here at the Arc, it gives us much pleasure to share the magic of wildflowers, water, and light with visitors near and far. Gladys Riley Golden Star Lily Preserve, endowed as it is with flowing water, tapestries of wildflowers, and the little sparks of summer fireflies, provides many points of connection between people and their homeland, fulfilling our universal yearning to find our place in the cosmos.

Gladys Riley, in so many ways, is a preserve with a golden glow.