Mohican State Park Forest Hiking Trails Pictures Movie

Mohican State Park has over 13 miles of hiking trails that take the visitor to the more interesting areas of the Mohican State park and forest. Lyons Falls trail follows Clear Fork Gorge and features two waterfalls. The Hemlock trail leads to the scenic wooden bridge, and Pleasant Hill trail follows the lake shoreline and offers beautiful views of the lake. Other trails are available in the adjacent Mohican state park forest for horsepeople as well as hikers.

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Mohican State park has scenic beauty and natural features that can be attributed to events that occurred over 12,000 years ago during the ice age in Ohio. The last glacier to enter Ohio, the Wisconsinan, ended its advance in the Mohican State Park region forming a glacial boundary. Several moraines, linear ridges of soil and rock till deposited along the ice edge, are evident in the area.

The erosional forces of glacial meltwaters hastened the carving of the narrow gorge of the Clear Fork of the Mohican River. This gorge cuts into the sandstone bedrock exposing huge outcroppings and creating steep cliff walls. The gorge is more than one thousand feet wide at the top and over three hundred feet deep. The striking Clearfork Gorge with its towering hemlocks and stands of old-growth white pine are of national significance. The National Park Service has thus dedicated the area as a Registered National Natural Landmark.

The Mohican State Memorial Forest surrounds the park and contains great plant and animal diversity. Ridge tops contain stands of white, red and black oaks, red maple and white pine. Beech, ash and tulip can be found in the middle and lower slopes with hemlock and yellow birch. The bottomlands contain sycamore, willow, buckeye, hawthorn and dogwood. The diversity of ferns in this region is astounding with as many as fifteen different species identified, including the rare walking fern.

Mohican is home to numerous mammals including raccoon, white-tail deer, skunk, opossum and red fox. Reptiles such as the box turtle, black rat snake and the poisonous copperhead are present in the area. Dusky salamanders, American toads and the gray tree frog are samples of local amphibians. The wild turkey has made a tremendous comeback in Ohio after being totally extirpated at one time. Significant numbers of this magnificent bird can be found in the surrounding forest. Bald eagles are occasionally sighted in the area.

Of particular interest is the abundance of nesting warblers in the Clear Fork Gorge. More than fifteen species including Northern Parula, Hooded, Cerulean and American Redstart nest here during spring and summer.

The Mohican State Park area was once the hunting grounds of the Delaware Indians, whose more famous warriors included Janacake, Bill Montour, Thomas Lyon (reportedly the ugliest man alive!) and James Smith, who was the first white man to come to this area. Smith was captured by the Indians and later adopted into their tribe. Several Delaware villages were located in the Mohican vicinity.

Settlement by non-Indians began at the turn of the nineteenth century, but settlement did not increase until the Indians were driven from the area during the War of 1812. John Chapman, immortalized as Johnny Appleseed, frequented the region during the 1800's, caring for his apple tree nurseries. His name and the date, carved in the wall of Lyons Falls, were an attraction for years. Unfortunately, the etchings have been obliterated with the passage of time.

Prior to 1949, most of the area that comprises the present Mohican State Park was part of the Mohican State Forest (also known as Mohican State Forest Park). The forest lands were administered by the Ohio Division of Forestry. In 1949, when the Ohio Department of Natural Resources was created, Mohican and several other state parks were developed from existing state forests. The new park was named Clear Fork State Park. Years later in 1966, the name was changed to Mohican State Park in order to alleviate confusion between Mansfield's Clearfork Reservoir and the state park. Even before this official move, visitors referred to the area as Mohican.

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