Glen Helen Through History

1000 BC: During this time of change, Neolithic people were apparently present at the Glen. In 1924, the remains of two bodies from this time period were found in a deposit of calcium carbonate near Grinnell Mill, where they had drowned in the bog.

500 AD: The mound building Hopewell visit the Glen. The mound they left behind, first excavated in 1953, contained the remains of an adolescent male. Later digs produced other skeletons and stone artifacts including a spear point and sharpening stone. 

1760: Miami Indians begin using the Yellow Spring as a watering point on the route to Old Piqua, an important trading center on the Mad River near Springfield.

1763: At the conclusion of the French and Indian War, the Miamis, who side with the losers, are driven out of Ohio by the Shawnee, allies of the British. Just south of the glen, an important Shawnee settlement called Chillicothe (now Oldtown) becomes a central point in local pioneer history as the birthplace of Chief Tecumseh, as the site of the gauntlet run by frontiersman Simon Kenton, and as the place where the Shawnee adopted Daniel Boone.

1804:  Lewis Davis purchases the land around the Yellow Spring from John Cleve Symmes, who owns nearly a quarter of a million acres in Southwest Ohio. Davis, Yellow Springs' first white settler, builds a tavern at the spring and begins advertising the water's "curative effects" in Cincinnati newspapers.

1807: "The Bullskin Trace," a Shawnee migration route from the Ohio River to Detroit, running right by the Yellow Spring, becomes a State Road. (The Shawnee appreciated greatly the "Golden Water" temperature of 52 degrees Fahrenheit.)

1826: A short-lived experiment in communal living begins near the Cascades. A group of Owenites, followers of British industrialist and utopian socialist Robert Owen, attempt to live together in a great log house, but disband within two years.

1842: William Neff of Cincinnati buys the Yellow Spring property. For years a series of owners build onto Davis' original tavern, creating a large, eclectic structure that becomes known as the Neff House. Though purchased as Neff's summer home, the place is so packed with visitors that Neff operates it as a hotel.

1846: Completion of the Little Miami Railroad results in a flourishing business in the Glen of quarrying limestone, which is then crushed and processed into lime for use in concrete and fertilizer.

1850: The "Glen Forest Water Cure" opens in the Sheldon Glen (known as the South Glen) south of the Neff property. A staff of physicians employs the water to cure peoples' "bilious affections."

1857: The water cure facility begins operation as the Memnonia Institute, a school of physical and spiritual harmonics under T.L. and Mary Gove Nichols. Notorious for their published writings on free love, the Nichols are soon invited to leave by an outraged delegation of local residents, including Horace Mann, Antioch's first president. In 1862 the structure burns to the ground.

1869: The sons of William Neff build a quarter million dollar hotel next to the original one at the Yellow Spring. Expecting immense profits from Southern vacationers, the Neff brothers construct a magnificent 246-room building that lives up to its billing but fails financially, and dismantled in 1890. Also in 1869, local baseball star and naturalist Hugh Taylor Birch leaves Antioch for Chicago without graduating.

1882: The Neff hotel closes.

1900: Neff Ground Park, including the lake, opens on land below the Yellow Spring. A dance pavilion is built near Route 68. 

1906: To kick off the summer term at Antioch College, newly elected president Simeon Fess hold the first Antioch Chautauqua in the Glen. As many as 25,000 visitors in a single day flock to see famous lecturers, hear musicians, and enjoy performances of Shakespeare under a big top. Fess develops political contacts as the event's emcee, eventually becoming a U.S. senator and chairman of the Republican National Committee.

1914: The Ohio National Guard has its annual encampment at the Neff Park. 

1920: To prevent the sale of the Glen to developers interested in building an amusement park there, Arthur E. Morgan, the new president of Antioch College, has the land around the Yellow Spring condemned as a water source. The spring briefly supplies water to the village, and its high iron content turns everything it touches orange.

1923: Antioch acquires its first piece of the Glen from the estate of John Bryan, an eccentric millionaire famous for his atheism and for building the largest barn in the world.

1929: Arthur Morgan and his wife Lucy cultivate the support of Hugh Taylor Birch, who achieved great wealth working for Standard Oil. Birch's favorite memory of Yellow Springs was his time spent in the Glen, and consequently he buys it all, donating it to the College in memory of his daughter, Helen. He builds a large home in the South Glen as his summer residence. At the age of eighty, Birch is awarded his degree from Antioch. 

1930: With the help of his stalwart assistant, Carmelo Ricciardi, Birch builds trails, plants trees, and clears several springs in the Glen, a practice the two continue for the next twelve years. 

1937: Birch presents a statue of Horace Mann to Antioch on the 100th anniversary of public education in America. Cast from the same mold as the original at the Massachusetts Statehouse, the statue stands within the Glen on land that Mann owned while president of Antioch.

1946: Kenneth Hunt, a biologist and geologist from Massachusetts, becomes the first director of Glen Helen and promotes its use for outdoor education.

1947: Christmas trees are planted in a portion of the Glen that becomes known as the Bryan School Forest, in a conservation measure designed to promote community relations between Antioch and Yellow Springs and control the harvesting of pines in the Glen. 

1949: The Yellow Spring is redesigned in its present form by local landscape architect, Louise Odiorne. 

1952: Trailside Museum is dedicated, along with the Inman steps, named for Professor of Biology Ondess Inman, and both built from the ruins of kilns left over from the lime industry.

1956: The Outdoor Education Center opens, its facilities built of lumber recycled from a recreation pavilion in the Glen and from WWII surplus barracks used by the college to house veteran students in the postwar era.

1958: The Ohio Dept. of Transportation proposes a bypass through the Glen for Route 68. Swift, broad-based public outcry results in the plan's abandonment within the year.

1959: Village Council begins planning a sewer to run across the Glen, another effort that is met with stiff opposition. Through private donations and a contribution of Glen land from the college, the sewer is rerouted.

1960:  As a direct result of recent threats to the glen, the Glen Helen Association forms to further protect the Glen from encroachment. 

1965: A proposal by the federal Soil Conservation Service to build a flood-control dam in the South Glen is abandoned.

1970: The Raptor Center opens, under the leadership of Stephen Kress.  Kress later achieves ornithological stardom by reestablishing populations of the Atlantic Puffin to the United States.

1972: Ken Hunt retires after nearly 30 years of service. Ralph Ramey, a wildlife conservationist and administrator in the Metropolitan Park District of Columbus, Ohio, becomes Director of Glen Helen.

1973:  The Sergius Vernet Memorial, also known as the Glen Helen Building, opens, a gift from the foundation endowed by the late industrialist's estate.

1975: Ralph Ramey has a 60-foot section of a covered bridge moved from New Burlington into the Glen to prevent its destruction by the creation of Caesar's Creek Reservoir.

1995: The Glen Helen Ecology Institute is established as "a bioregional center that seeks to address the ecological, economic, political, social, and spiritual challenges to our culture as we strive to build a sustainable society." Rick Flood is named the Institute's first Executive Director.