Reforested Golf Course in Geauga County, Ohio, Creates 180-Acre Public Park
The following project was funded by the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, a federal program to help remediate contaminated sites, improve water quality, restore habitats, and conduct other essential environmental projects throughout the Great Lakes region.
A once-manicured golf course in Geauga County, Ohio, has transformed into a thriving public park where visitors can stroll past native trees and shrubs, cold-water streams, revitalized wetlands, and quality habitat for wildlife. This blend of recreation and habitat is thanks to a series of restoration projects prioritizing natural spaces over putting greens and has breathed new life into the 180-acre park.
Purchased in 2018 by the local parks commission, the former Wicked Woods Golf Course is now Veterans Legacy Woods, named to honor those who have served in the armed forces. Located less than 40 miles from Cleveland, Veterans Legacy Woods is home to a network of mature and fledgling forests, hiking trails, reservable lodge spaces, picnic tables and park shelters, and a nature-inspired playground.
Environmentally speaking, a lot has changed since the park was converted from a golf course seven years ago. Previously, more than 120 acres of Wicked Woods Golf Course were dedicated to mowed fairways, which, while useful for golfing, provide little wildlife habitat and require large quantities of water and nutrients, such as phosphorus, to remain green.
To return the land to a more natural state, the parks commission—Geauga Park District—is rewilding those fairways through a variety of projects, including constructing new cold-water streams and pledging to plant an estimated total of 25,000 trees. In partnership with local nonprofits, environmental groups, corporations, and other volunteers, these reforestation projects invest in the long-term ecological health of Geauga County by restoring valuable native ecosystems to the region. Once restored, these ecosystems provide opportunities for outdoor recreation, create habitat for local wildlife, improve water quality, reduce the risk of flooding and erosion, and more.
Reforesting riparian habitat
In an important step toward these rewilding goals, Geauga Park District was awarded $159,360 in Great Lakes Restoration Initiative funding via the U.S. Forest Service in 2022 to reforest 13 acres of Veterans Legacy Woods with native trees and shrubs. A partnership between Geauga Park District and the nearby Chagrin River Watershed Partners, the project was implemented in 2024 and focused on reforesting riparian corridors by planting 2,470 native plants near a cold-water stream on the park.
Cold-water streams, which are characterized by waters that don’t typically exceed 72 degrees Fahrenheit, are an important habitat for cold-water fish like the endangered native American brook trout, aquatic macroinvertebrates like crayfish, and other species. Threatened by urbanization and rising global temperatures, these cold-water habitats are steadily growing warmer, which increasingly puts their plant and wildlife occupants at risk.
To combat this habitat loss, Geauga Park District has created manmade cold-water streams that draw from cool, underground springs on several of their 28 local park properties. Built in 2024, the cold-water stream at Veterans Legacy Woods spans more than 1,500 linear feet and provides year-round habitat.
Once construction of the stream was complete, Geauga Park District utilized its Great Lakes Restoration Initiative funding to plant thousands of native tree and shrub species along the riparian corridors flanking the stream. Project coordinators cite dogwoods, oaks, maples, sycamores, and basswoods as a few of the native Ohio tree species that have been planted at Veterans Legacy Woods so far.
Together, these thousands of new plants will introduce more shade to fortify the park’s cold-water stream against climate change while creating habitat for local land-dwelling animals like hawks, owls, deer, rodents, and pollinators to thrive.
Plants help keep watersheds clean
The presence of these new trees and shrubs also has numerous clean water benefits for the surrounding watershed. Via their root systems, the 2,470 new plants installed alongside the cold-water stream are estimated to intercept about 247,000 gallons of rainfall each year. This will help prevent flooding and erosion by distributing water more evenly along the stream banks and improve water quality by filtering rainwater before it reaches the local watershed—a major consideration for the health of nearby Lake Erie.
In addition to cold-water streams, Veterans Legacy Woods is home to multiple wetlands and approximately 3,782 feet of the Cuyahoga River, both of which eventually make their way to Lake Erie via the Cuyahoga River watershed. Famous for catching on fire at least a dozen times by the mid-1900s, the Cuyahoga River has faced a long history of industrial pollution. Only decades of environmental restoration have taken it from one of the most polluted rivers in the United States to the home of a new National Water Trail for water recreation in 2025.
Given this history—and the local watershed’s connection to the Great Lakes—the water filtration benefits of reforestation projects at Veterans Legacy Woods are particularly important. By filtering sediment and excess nutrients from rainwater runoff, these fledgling forests help prevent toxic algal blooms in the Great Lakes and create healthier environments for aquatic species to thrive.
Moving forward, Geauga Park District plans to reforest one area of Veterans Legacy Woods each year until rewilding is complete. Other restoration work at this location, funded by a variety of partners, has included removing invasive species and constructing two new wetlands to encourage biodiversity and improve water filtration.
