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August 1997 Featured Story
Limberlost found
 “Pity of pities it is, but man can change and is changing the forces of nature.… Man can ‘cut down the clouds.’ In utter disregard or ignorance of what he will do to himself, his children, and his country, he persists in doing it wherever he can see a few cents in the sacrifice.” — Gene Stratton-Porter on the destruction of wetlands, 1912
“I realize it’ll never be what it used to be. This is more for the generations to come. What we see today … is only minor of what it’ll be in 50 years. But to really get it back, it would take centuries.” — Ken Brunswick on the restoration of the Limberlost wetland, 1997
(Ten years after restoration began, Electric Consumer revisited the wetland. Here's the June 2007 update.)
Restoration begins on Gene Stratton-Porter's beloved wetland
In Gene Stratton-Porter’s classic novel A Girl of the Limberlost, the title character collects moths from the great Limberlost swamp to pay for her college education.
In one passage, though, her suitor tells her not to dwell on college. “If you could only realize it, my girl, you are in college …. You are in the school of experience, and it has taught you to think, and given you a heart.… You have been in the college of the Limberlost all your life.”
Ken Brunswick shares that alma mater. He studied at the college of the Limberlost through correspondence — reading Stratton-Porter’s turn-of-the-century nature books when he was a boy.
“I used to sit underneath a big walnut tree out in our woods,” said Brunswick, now 52. Though he grew up on a farm in Ohio just over the state line from the eastern Indiana swamp, he said, “I had no idea I was living that close to the Limberlost area.”
It wouldn’t have mattered if Brunswick had lived across the road from Limberlost — as he does now. None of the swamp or its wildlife Stratton-Porter wrote about was left to experience firsthand by the time he picked up her books.
The swamp was being drained even before she made Limberlost a part of the national vocabulary. And ever since the 1910s, Limberlost has been lost. Lost for generations. Lost until now, that is.
Brunswick, a Jay County REMC member, has helped lead a movement to bring part of that wetland back.
The dedication for the Loblolly Marsh Wetland Preserve, a 428-acre section of the old swamp in northern Jay County, was held June 14. Brunswick put together a coalition of conservation and preservation groups, government agencies and, most importantly, landowners to allow the land to be purchased by Friends of the Limberlost. The non-profit group that supports the Limberlost State Historic Site then deeded the property to the state.
Named for the area’s original epithet (a Miami Indian word meaning “stinking river”), the Loblolly preserve is now part of the Limberlost historic site in nearby Geneva. Before, the historic site consisted only of Stratton-Porter’s home.
At the dedication, curator Becky Smith said two-thirds of the home’s visitors expect to see the swamp she immortalized in her books.
“It just greatly expands the interpretive and public areas,” Smith said. “We’re excited about it.”
In addition to the historical connection, the wetland will also provide the geological and environmental benefits that wetlands bring.
“They act as a sponge,” said Scott Mynsberge, district conservationist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Mynsberge, who spoke at the dedication, became involved in the project through the Jay County Soil and Water Conservation District.
Wetlands filter contaminants from groundwater and trap sediment that would otherwise run off into rivers. They also absorb excess rainfall. “In the long run, (wetland restoration) may be one of the best answers to reduce flooding,” Mynsberge said.
And, of course, it’s hoped the restored wetland will bring back some of the rich species of wildlife and plant life that inspired Stratton-Porter.
“She watched the wetland be destroyed and diminished,” said Marla Freeman, former president of Friends of the Limberlost. “We get to see the wetland come back.”
Limberlost lost
Originally, Limberlost was an extensive wetland of swamp, marsh and prairie potholes. It covered some 13,000 acres in Jay, Adams and Wells counties near the head of the Wabash River.
So deep and dangerous was the swamp, people had to be careful going in or they’d never come out. That’s how it came to be called Limberlost. Legend has it that a tall, lanky teenager nicknamed “Limber” Jim went in the swamp in the early 1800s. When he never returned, folks asked, “Where’s Limber?” The response was, “Limber’s lost.”
In the 1880s, large oil and gas deposits were found near Geneva. A system of tiles and ditches were created to drain the vast swamp, a common practice at the time. Its timber was harvested.
At the same time, Gene Stratton-Porter moved to Geneva with her husband Charles, a successful pharmacist and businessman. Always a lover of birds and nature, she increasingly ventured into the swamp to first observe, then preserve —with camera and pen — the natural history that was slowly draining away. In doing so, she launched a career for herself as a naturalist and a best-selling writer.
In her work, she protested with passion the destruction of such wetlands. Smith and Freeman noted the irony that just when movements were afoot to establish giant nature preserves and national parks like Yellowstone, wetlands were disappearing from our own back yards.
“She recognized, at a time when our natural resources were so plentiful, the delicate balance that is there,” said Freeman. That balance in nature and how human beings fit in is just now being understood, a century after Stratton-Porter.
By 1913, the lush swamp and its wildlife were gone, and so was Stratton-Porter. She built a new home on the shore of Sylvan Lake in far northern Indiana. There, she continued her writing and photography and conservation efforts among undisturbed wetlands and wildlife.
Limberlost found
Brunswick, too, had a passion for water and wildlife. “After rains, I always begged my parents to take me out driving,” he said. “I just loved to see the wetlands … as far back as I can remember.”
He had hopes of pursuing a career in natural resources. But in high school, as a farm kid, he was herded onto the agriculture track.
Farming was a good life, he said, but he never lost interest in wetlands. When he started his dairy farm in northern Jay County in 1976, he restored wetlands on his own 130 acres. “I was doing a lot of what I always wanted to do anyway. I owned my own wildlife areas.”
But what was occurring across the highway from his farm intrigued him. Farm land from about state road 18 running five miles north to Geneva and the Wabash River seemed to flood each year. Crop loss was substantial.
“It was such a huge area,” Brunswick said. “I was used to seeing just a few acres (flood), but this was thousands.”
He started researching the flat lowland and discovered that it had been the long-lost Limberlost swamp, and, in pre-glacial times, the bed of a mammoth river. The area was predestined to drain poorly. “There’s only so much you can do with the geological limitations,” he said.
Farmers could get good crops some years. In others, they’d be destroyed once, replanted and destroyed again, and in some years replanted and destroyed a third time by the persistent flooding. Considering crop insurance on the land, “That was a huge tax drain,” he said.
By 1982, he started studying the feasibility of returning at least some of the area to its natural state. “I kept thinking, ‘why isn’t somebody doing something about what’s happening?’”
Brunswick tried to obtain grants that would allow him to purchase and restore some of the land as a wetland. But no funding was there for an individual attempting such a project.
Then, in 1991, he gave up his dairy operation and started pursuing work in natural resources. He was hired by the Jay County conservation district to look for wetlands to restore. He returned to his Limberlost restoration project and also enlisted the help of the Friends of the Limberlost.
Freeman was president of the group at the time and recalled their first meetings. “It was like destiny,” she said. She, too, had thoughts of restoring the swamp. Her research leaned toward Stratton-Porter and the historical significance; his was more on the geological and environmental aspects.
“Everything just snowballed,” she said. “I don’t think anybody else could have done this. He was so knowledgable about the area and the soil types.”
ACRES, Inc., a non-profit group out of Fort Wayne that sets up nature preserves in northeastern Indiana, also offered help. Brunswick said the group broadened the project’s scope from his original 80 to 100 acres to a few hundred.
With several groups now backing the idea, Friends of the Limberlost went public with its fund-raising campaign in June 1993.
Individual donors could “buy” swampland at $10, $25 or $100 a foot, or $500 for a quarter acre or $1,000 for a “golden acre.” Along with ACRES, other major contributors included: the Indiana Heritage Trust, Ropchan Foundation and many other companies and organizations.
The group also turned to the Wetlands Reserve Program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The voluntary program offers landowners payment for restoring and protecting wetlands. Farmers can retire marginal lands and reap the many benefits of having wetlands on their property.
Eventually, three landowners agreed to sign up at least portions of their properties for what became most of the Loblolly preserve. Federal wetland funds supplemented by private dollars gave the landowners the market value for the land.
Jim Fiechter, a Jay County REMC member, sold all of his 142 acres in the area. “We had decided several years ago we weren’t farming it profitably,” he said. “Three out of four or four out of five years we’d harvest nothing.”
Fiechter, who raises hogs and grain in the area with his brothers, said he bought the land in 1981. He was aware of the flooding problem, but said he thought some dredging done on a ditch that ran through the property and the addition of drainage tiles would solve the problem.
It didn’t. The “mucky” soil washed back in and farming there was a struggle. “We’d flood out and hardly get any rain,” he said.
Fiechter looked at the Wetlands Reserve Program but didn’t like the strings the federal government attached to his land. He looked at selling the land but said he thought, “Who’d want it?”
That’s when Brunswick came knocking.
Indiana State Sen. David Ford spoke about the value of greenspaces at the Loblolly dedication. As general counsel to the Indiana Farm Bureau, Inc., though, Ford knows restoration of wetlands can be a touchy issue. Such projects can impact a farmer’s ability to farm his land.
Both Ford and Fiechter said farmers and conservationists have more reasons to work together than be at odds. They said both groups need to understand each other and work to their mutual benefit.
Though the Loblolly restoration is only in its infancy, Ford said so far it’s been a model of cooperation. “It was land that was not very productive for agricultural purposes,” he said, “and it was all voluntary.”
Some issues remain. Most notably, Ford said, is how the restoration might affect drainage on nearby properties. The state will have to abide by its own drainage laws that protect adjacent landowners.
Fiechter said, “The plans I’ve seen, I can get excited about. There’s just a concern of the unknown.”
“We won’t restore areas if we have to stop someone else’s drainage,” Brunswick said. Though it limits the restoration, the only tiles being cut for the project are those within the preserve itself.
“I realize it’ll never be what it used to be,” Brunswick added. “We’re going to have to work with it the way it is.”
One recent sunny day, Brunswick stood on the edge of Jay County Road 250W, just north of state road 18. If it hadn’t been for a large wooden signboard, it would’ve been hard to tell he was standing in the middle of the Loblolly preserve.
To the west, scrubby brush has taken over where soybeans grew, but some of the natural wetland grasses are already starting to poke up. “In the future, we’re going have trees growing, but we’re talking 10 to 15 years down the road,” he said.
Brunswick pointed to where hiking trails will run. He pointed to where an observation point will be on higher ground. From there, visitors will be able to look out over much of the preserve to see wildlife gathering along a shallow lake. Though there were four such lakes in the original Limberlost, only one will be partially restored. Water is already starting to gather.
“Once we restore the water in the area,” he said, “you set up the conditions that will bring on the old plants.” Bull rush, cattails, plantain, spike rush, sedges — these should all come back. And once the habitat is there, wildlife like mallards, wood ducks, mergansers, sandhill cranes and other water fowl should flock to the area.
Still, this is not a project for the impatient.
“It’s going to take time to get it back to swamp,” said Indiana Department of Natural Resources naturalist Pat Bolman. “It didn’t take nearly as long to go from swamp to cornfield.”
Bolman works at the Gene Stratton-Porter State Historic Site on Sylvan Lake. There, he sees wetlands in pristine conditions and recognizes the challenges ahead at Loblolly. “It’s an ambitious project,” he said. “It’s like an 80-year-old gardener planting a tree; she’ll never see it mature.” Getting the wetland back to the way Stratton-Porter saw it, Bolman said, “will not happen in our lifetime or even our children’s lifetimes.”
“This is more for the generations to come,” Brunswick said. “What we see today, what we’ll see, is only minor of what it’ll be in 50 years. But to really get it back, it would take centuries — and then it can’t because of the ditches going through.”
Brunswick’s work on the wetland was voluntary until the project reached its final stage. He’s now working for the Friends of the Limberlost on an Environmental Protection Agency grant administered by the state to see the project through.
The restorative power of nature was a common theme in Stratton-Porter’s writing. A century ago, Limberlost restored the love and respect of nature that her father instilled in her as a little girl. It gave her a new career. Even drained, Limberlost did much the same for Brunswick.
Sometime in the next century, other girls and boys might venture out in the restored Limberlost wetland and plop themselves beneath a tall tree with a nature book. And they’ll catch a glimpse of how Stratton-Porter saw it, and how Brunswick envisions it. And they’ll find inspiration. The college of the Limberlost will produce new graduates to carry on the work of Stratton-Porter and the work of people like Brunswick.
Written By: eceditor
Date Posted: 5/31/2007
Number of Views: 525
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