The Barbara A. Beiser  

Field Station - Construction

Barbara Beiser Voorhees was a 1949 graduate of Marietta College.  She graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a BA in Business. Barbara was born in Marietta and graduated from Marietta High School. Her father, John Beiser, was a circulation manager at The Marietta Times and a local golf pro. Her grandfather, Dr. John A. Beiser, was a dentist in Marietta -- his office was located at 254 Front Street from 1901 until his death in 1962. Barbara died on August 2, 2005 in Highland Park, New Jersey.  Barbara is survived by her husband Ralph, four children, 15 grandchildren, and her brother John.  Ralph  is a retired stockbroker and graduated from Rutgers University in 1948 and received his MBA from NYU in 1950. The field station property was in the Beiser family for many years and was last farmed before the Great Depression, although portions have been logged since.  

Right: The stream crossing on August 12th, 2008.  The brush has been cleared and the areas is almost ready for grading.

By August 14th they were brining in gravel.  We were blessed by very dry weather through this part of the construction, but there was some gravel on hand (to control siltation) to line the stream crossing if rain threatened.  Note also the pile of wood chips in the background.  A big effort was made to cut down as few trees as possible; one factor that helped was the fact that we were re-establishing a road in an existing road bed and thus the only trees in the way were small trees which had grown up since the last time the property was logged.  Most of these were chipped; note the pile of chips in the background.  Some of the larger trees were cut up as firewood and left for the Arnolds.  The gravel in this picture is for what was to be the lower, main parking lot.

On August 19th the focus was on the stream crossing.  Here, Jim is using the excavator to place the very large stones that underlie the crossing.  Rather than use a culvert at this location, we worked with the Natural Resources Conservation Service of the USDA to design a "low water" stream crossing.  This design minimizes environmental impacts, especially when used in situations like this where an ephemeral stream (a stream without running water at some times of the year) is crossed by a road.  If we had gone with a traditional culvert we would have needed at least a 48" culvert and the cost would have been significant.

For this crossing, the existing stream bed was excavated and set to the side.  The large rocks you see were placed in the resulting depression, bringing the roadway back almost to stream level.  Final level was achieved with #2 limestone (a coarse grade) and these stones were locked in place with fine limestone screenings.  

Our engineer, Tony Durm, had adapted the NRCS stream crossing design to our site.  We did hit an unforeseen difficulty in that just behind where the excavator sits in this image there is an outcropping of rock.  This prevented excavating the roadway low enough to achieve the recommended grade coming out of the crossing.  Billy Burkhart and Jim solved this problem by adding additional fine limestone on the hillside to lock in the rocks there; the resulting grade is steep but drivable.

Left:  Jim consults with Billy Burkhart (white shirt) on the design of the stream crossing.  

By August 21st gravel placement was the main activity as the upper parts of the road were graded.  The truck at right is dumping gravel across the Sands property.  A good driver can tailgate the gravel fairly evenly over the ground - even on a steep hill.  Any remaining irregularities are smoothed out with a dozer blade.  The dozer's treads also begin the process of packing the gravel down, a task that is furthered by the vibrating roller and continues as 15-passenger vans visit the site.

The photos below show what this stretch of road looked like 1 day later.  The gravel has been spread and the rock has been compacted.  August 22 was a key day; the road was drivable all the way back to the terminal parking lot - and classes started the following Monday. 

To the left are two pictures of the terminal parking lot on the college property.  This is the end of the road; a parking lot and turn-around.  The original specs called for a 20' x 20' lot with the road extending just a van's length past the parking lot.  The idea was that a van could pull past the lot and back into it to park - there would be room for 3 vans (with one on the road extension).    

Billy had to clear a much larger area to let his large trucks turn around (see picture above); I guess he didn't want the trucks to get their tires dirty, because he covered the whole clearing with gravel, giving us a  105' x 42' parking lot!

Left:  The money shot:  On August 22nd I was able to drive my station wagon all the way to the terminal parking lot.  At this point, the lower part of the road from the end of the township road to the stream crossing was not covered with gravel, but it was passable (in dry weather!) by car.  On a project like this you build your road from the end back so you don't tear it up hauling gravel over finished road.  I should point out that our informal design specs indicated that the road should be drivable by a Honda Civic.  As of October 25th I haven't had the Civic back there, but our dean got her Toyota Prius back there, so we're close.

As you can see, we have plenty of room to turn around!

We have several small (18") culverts along the road to allow water coming down from the hills above the road to get past the road without causing it to become wet and soft.  It was really important that these culverts not contribute to erosion downslope; as you can see here we had Jim place a number of large rocks (dislodged during the road grading) below each culvert to arrest the water flow.  We will be monitoring the culverts and the downslope areas for signs of erosion; we will add some plantings as needed to help stabilize the banks.  The forested nature of the slopes - as well as the porous nature of our road and parking lots - will help to reduce runoff by encouraging water to penetrate the ground and flow to the river as groundwater.  Asphalt roads would cause a lot of runoff, and contribute pollutants (oils) to the river.  We didn't want that.

With the upper road finished we hit a snag.  The lower part of the road is built over an abandoned township road.  Early in the project we had the county surveyor mark the end of township maintenance - we knew we were responsible for anything past that point.  In addition, I had arranged for Billy to place gravel on what we though was the part of the township road that was still their responsibility as we didn't want to be a burden to the taxpayers in the township.  If you look in the picture below left, the township's responsibility ended about halfway through the field behind the car.  

Part of the township's responsibility was a culvert.  The culvert was in bad shape; it was undersized both in diameter and in length.  The stream it carried was about 6 feet below the road grade, and the banks were very steep and unstable - we were worried about losing a van over the edge in wet weather.  Billy's trucks could just barely cross it; and to make matters worse it was corroded and collapsing (above left).  We were hoping the township would replace it, but they told us that two years earlier (just after the survey marker had been placed) they had abandoned this stretch of road, including the culvert.  It was now our responsibility.

Billy and I worked to cut the scope of the project in a few places, and I asked the state if we could spend some of the contingency funds built into the grant to replace the culvert.  After some tense negotiations, we got permission to proceed.  By that point, Billy had to pull his equipment out to do another job, and it wasn't until about September 15th that he got back in there.  During most of that time the weather was dry and the dirt road passable, but it did rain one day and Dr. Tschunko almost got stuck.

Above:  Culverts old and new.  The new culvert is 40' long and 60" in diameter; the old one was 30"x60" in cross section and only 25 feet long.  The short length led to dangerously steep and unstable banks leading up to a very narrow roadway barely wide enough for a van (below left).  We again worked with the NCRS to determine the right culvert size; the area drained by the stream was almost 200 acres and they recommended at least a 48" culvert for a 10 year storm event.  Below, before and during pictures of the roadway.

Above:  a finished view of the roadway, which is much wider.  In addition, the banks are not as steep and are better stabilized.  Jim placed the rocks to armor the banks and Drs. Brown and McShaffrey planted the grass on September 26th (the image above was made October 5th - good luck on rain (it started while we were planting the grass and returned every few days over the next few unseasonably warm weeks) contributed to good growth of the grass, which will further stabilize the banks.

Above left:  The new culvert, with actual-sized students for scale (September 16th).  Above right:  The road crossing on September 15th.  The red stripe is an overlay on some tire tracks left by a 15-passenger van.  As you can see (left), the new roadway is more than wide enough to handle a van (September 16th).  On this day, Jim was spreading the gravel on the old township road (behind the photographer of the image to the left).  When the van came out of the field station Jim was blocking the road with the bulldozer; he had to back up and the van followed closely, giving the impression that the van was pushing the bulldozer down the road.

In a way, we were lucky on the whole culvert situation; the township would not have been able to afford a first-class job (and if they had, it would have taken resources away from other areas of needed work). We now have a very safe crossing that will hopefully last for a very long time.

Above:  The upstream side of the culvert before the grass was planted (image made September 21st, 2008).  Left - the nearly finished road and entrance parking lot on September 18th.

Right:  Jim rolling out the gravel on September 26th.  This was a final pass to touch up a few spots; the road had really been done a week earlier.  Unfortunately, a few ORV riders had gotten onto the road (driving past 4 separate no trespassing signs) and had torn up the gravel in some spots, so Jim rolled it one more time before loading the roller on the trailer and taking it off the site.  While Jim was doing the rolling, Dave Brown and I planted grass seed at the culvert and in other key places to prevent any erosion.  Good thing we did; it started to rain that morning as we were putting down the seed.  As mentioned earlier, the rain came at just the right times after that.

Above:  The grass on October 5th, only a week after planting. 

Note how well the grass is coming in 1 month after planting.

Since we were now responsible for the culvert and the extra stretch of road, we decided to redesign our entrance and relocate the placement of the gate.  The original plan had been for the gate to be located at the low-water stream crossing - almost 1000' from where we finally placed it at the culvert.  This will allow for better access control and less wear-and-tear on the road.  On October 24th I met with Eddie Lindimore and his grandson, Jacob (left) of Lifetime Fencing in McConnelsville. We (well, mostly they) had the fence and gate up in about 3 1/2 hours. Immediately to the left of the gate is a narrow pass-through to allow pedestrians to pass through as the gate is normally kept locked.  With the station open members of the public will park at the small parking lot adjacent to the gate (Andy and Kate Grimm of Grimm's Green Acres Apple Orchard own the property and were gracious enough to accommodate our redesign by allowing us to place the parking lot there).  From there, it is a 0.3 mile walk along the road to the far parking lot, where the trails begin.  When college classes visit the site, or when the Friends of Lower Muskingum River or the College host an event at the site, the gate is opened and we have a total of 3 parking lots available for use.  Members of the public parking at the gate also have easy access to the nearby Hills Covered Bridge.

The road has already proven its value.  Compared to parking near the gate and waling in, driving to the far parking lot saves almost 20 minutes of class time going in and another 20 minutes coming back.  This means 40 more minutes on site every trip.  In a 3-hour lab period before the road it would take about 45 minutes to load the van, drive to the site, and hike back in.  Now we can be on site and working in 25 minutes.  That means that for a 2:30-5:30 lab we can spend a little over 2 hours actually working, instead of a little less than 1.5 hours.  Multiplied by the number of student hours in the classes this is a real timesaver.

On October 27th, Dave Brown and I placed the project sign near the main gate, completing the onsite work for the Clean Ohio portion of the project (only the paperwork remained).

Well, almost all the work was done - it turned out the bolts we took with us into the field would not fit the signposts.  So, the sign was temporarily held up by two 1/4" bolts, which couldn't be snugged up all the way.  I had to run back out to the site at 6:30 the next morning to get some better bolts in.

Construction Notes

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