BIOLOGY
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The Barbara A. Beiser Field Station - Station History |
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Barbara Beiser Voorhees
was a 1949 graduate of |
History
The Barbara A. Beiser Field Station has an interesting story behind it, one filled with a number of fascinating characters. Like any good story, it has its plot twists, its surprises, its heroes, and even a villain or two.
Our story starts with a remarkable woman, Barbara Voorhees, a woman of many interests and causes. Wife of Ralph Voorhees and mother of 4 children, Barbara raised her family while contributing to a number of civic causes in and around Brunswick New Jersey where the Voorhees family made their home. Barbara certainly would have fit in with today's Marietta College and its emphasis on civic engagement; while living in New Brunswick she was president of its YMCA and a playhouse there, as well as volunteering at Meals on Wheels.
Upon Barbara's untimely passing in 2005; Ralph began to look for ways to honor her memory. Of course he gave generously to his own alma mater, Rutgers University, an institution he and Barbara had supported for years. In the back of his mind, however, was a piece of property he and Barbara had bought from her family, the Beisers, just outside of Marietta, Ohio. Barbara and Ralph had visited her family in Marietta many times, and they visited the old family farm and the nearby church where the family had attended church in the 1800's and where several members of the family are buried on a small knoll in site of the family homestead. The family had not lived there since her grandfather, John A. Beiser, went to college and became a dentist, moving into Marietta in the process.
Living in New Jersey, it was impractical for Ralph to actively manage the property, and he delegated this task to his nephew, David Sands, son of Barbara's sister Judy. David is himself a graduate of Marietta College, with a background in geology and environmental science. As the Safety/Service Director for the city of Marietta, David was in a unique position to see several opportunities when Ralph contacted him to see if there might be some way a gift of the property could be of use to Barbara's alma mater, Marietta College. David was aware of a state initiative, the Clean Ohio Green Space Conservation Program, that provided money for local entities to purchase green space and prevent its further development. David in turn contacted a local woman, Marilyn Ortt, a botanist and also a Marietta College graduate, and director of many local green initiatives to see what she though of the idea. Marilyn knew the college was very interested in obtaining a field station, and put David in contact with Dr. Dave McShaffrey of the biology department at the college in the spring of 2006. The college deliberated the idea over the summer, and on August 17th, 2006, David Sands led a group from the college to the site and planning began to apply for the state program. The idea was to leverage Ralph's gift by purchasing the land from him with Clean Ohio funds; this would allow Ralph to endow the field station with a fund to assure its future operation and development.
A team from the college set about writing the grant proposal; Beth McNally, the college's grant writer wrote most of the text with much help from Marilyn Ortt; the station plan was developed by Dave McShaffrey. Provost and Dean of the College Sue DeWine was a vocal supporter of the effort and helped to smooth the way for the project in several key areas. A hitch arose when it was determined that the College was not eligible for Clean Ohio funds. At this point, Marilyn Ortt stepped in with the Friends of Lower Muskingum River, a land conservation group which was not only eligible to receive Clean Ohio funds, they already written several successful grants to that program. One important task was to gather support from local officials; this work was done mostly by Marilyn Ortt and David Sands. The grant was submitted in the fall of 2006 and we received notification that we had received the grant in the spring of 2007.
Work began immediately on implementing the grant. The first step was to resurvey the property; as it turns out the requirements of the state program prohibit the construction of any buildings on the land purchased with state funds. Thus, we had to have the surveyor lay out a one-acre plot for Ralph Voorhees to donate directly to the college so that if we ever want to place a building at the station it will be possible to do so. Conveyance of this land to the college also meant that the access road and parking lot would not be on any of the land owned by the Friends, thus ensuring that most of the property will remain undeveloped in any way. Also, over the winter we began to work with contractors for the actual construction of the road and fence for the property. As part of the latter effort, Dave McShaffrey took Eddie Lindimore of Lifetime Fencing and one of his fence installers across the property while there were several inches of snow on the ground in the winter of 2007. With
the college receiving deed to some of the property directly,
however, new problems arose. The College's Board of
Trustees would now have to approve the transfer, and
additional information had to be developed for them. Dan
Bryant, vice-president of the college for finance stepped in to
shepherd the proposal through the board, which approved the transfer
in the summer of 2007. The pieces were all in place for the land transfer and application was made to the state for the release of the first of the funds; the money to actually purchase the property. The Clean Ohio Program requires a 1/4 local match; these funds were provided by Ralph Voorhees himself. Meanwhile, the fall semester started and the first classes (Zoology, Field Biology Techniques and Flowering Plants) began to use the site. The first aquatic sampling was done by the Zoology class on September 4th; the first permanent transect was surveyed by the field biology class the following day. Student volunteers began clearing brush and creating trails. The first such volunteers met at the site on September 12, 2007 (David Merkle, Bill Barron and Nick Erland). While waiting for the land transfer to proceed, Ralph and the college decide to go ahead and have a dedication for the facility. The dedication occurred on campus September 15th, 2007, and was attended by Ralph Voorhees, two of his children; Barbara's brother John, and a number of the Beiser family and friends, both local and from as far away as Texas! The dedication was organized by Linda Stroh of the Advancement Office working under the direction of Lori Lewis, vice-president for advancement at Marietta College. The ceremony was followed by lunch at President Jean Scott's house, and, later in the day, a trip to the property itself. More on the dedication can be found here.
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The
late fall and the spring of 2008 were largely spent in planning the
road and fence construction. We asked around, and, based on
recommendations from a number of knowledgea ble people in the
community invited 3 road contractors to visit the site and prepare
bids to do the road work. We selected one of them to build the
road. However, in the meantime a problem arose. Language
in the grant award document stipulated that any construction over
$5,000 had to be planned and supervised by a professional
engineer. We didn't exactly have one on staff (at either
Marietta College or Friends of Lower Muskingum River), so we had to
cast around for a volunteer. We found one in Tony Durm, an
ODOT engineer working in Marietta. Tony is a big volunteer in
the community and he agreed to help us out. At about the same
time the Ohio Public Works Commission got back to us and
said that we would NOT need the engineer after all - but that we
would have to formally bid the project out. Tony came to our
rescue here by drawing up official specifications for the
road. The City of Marietta, in the person of several people
working in the streets and mayor's office walked us through the
process of securing legal bids. Finally, on June 20th, 2008
(at 10AM!) we opened the bid(s) and we had a contractor. Billy
Burkhart, of Burkhart Trucking and Excavating, was our low bidder,
and he was able to bring the project in for the same price he had estimated
2 years earlier when he was asked to provide an estimate for the
grant proposal (although we did have to downscale the scope of work
a few times to make the budget). After a few more weeks of
waiting to get our paperwork ready to be filed with the state we were
just waiting for a break in the weather....
Beiser Field Station Road Construction
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| While the construction was underway, so was our fall field season. Students in Flowering Plants and Zoology made numerous trips to the station. Fortunately, by August 21st, the road was drivable back to the parking lot on the college property. This meant that classes could be driven back to the station (sometimes driving around bulldozers and excavators), and THAT saved 20 minutes of hiking just to get on-site from our former parking spot back on Andy and Kate Grimm's property. Overall, the road was saving us 40 minutes of travel time every trip, and in a 3-hour lab, that's huge. Also, since we no longer had to maintain a path into the station, we could concentrate on paths at the station itself, and by October we had over 1.5 miles of trails blazed on the site itself. | ||
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Ironically, the gate and sign went up at the end of our 2008 fall field season. Now the work turns to invasive species control, marking the trails, building new trails and improving the present ones, and starting to identify tree and plant species for a nature trail. Work on the trails got a big boost on November 9th, 2008, when Emily Kemble, Megan Stuhlfauth and Whitney Swain teamed up in the spirit of their pioneering forebears (Merkle, Barron and Erland) for an afternoon of trailcutting on the Hillside Trail. Like the Merkle Stairway before them (the Stairway was lost to the world when the stream crossing was built), the Swain Wall, the Stulhfauth Steps and the Kemble Rocks will assist hikers on the station. |
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Above: Kemble, Stuhlfauth and Swain |
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Above: The Swain Wall supporting the trail is composed of the Kemble Rocks.
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On December 8th, 2008, this crew of faculty and students marked the back boundary of the station with nature preserve signs. They also began to cut the perimeter trail in that area, and marked future sections of the trail. Left to right: Dr. Katy Lustofin, Jesse Daubert, Travis Kraker, Whitney Swain, Megan Stuhlfauth, Dr. Dave Brown. | |
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Construction
of the road started the first week of August, 2008. The road
was done September 26th; the fence and gate went up on October 24th
and the entrance sign on October 27th. There were a number of
adventures in those 3 months. The biggest was that sometime
after we started on the project the local township had abandoned
several hundred feet of road that we thought they were
maintaining. That meant that we not only had to
upgrade that portion of the road, we also had to replace an aging,
corroding, undersized culvert with something that would be sage to
drive over and which would stand up to the flooding that the site
experiences. It took some quick recalculating, but with the
cooperation of our contractor and the OPWC we were able to accommodate
the changes. All the details of the construction (and a lot
more pictures) can be accessed via this link.
Aerial view of the field station. SR 26 runs east-west just out of the top of the frame; the Ohio River similarly runs southwest below the frame. The red squares approximate the property boundaries.
