Notes from my Knapsack 8-11-22

Notes from my Knapsack 8-11-22
Jeff Gill

Watersheds as revelations on our landscape
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Up in the northwest corner of our county, I found the headwaters of Raccoon Creek, a curl of ditch heading first west towards the border with Franklin County just a quick walk ahead, then bending to the south and back around until it was ready to make a wide loop around Johnstown, and on to Granville and Newark.

A generous estimate of a thirty mile length from just north of Westley Chapel Road, to the confluence with the South Fork of the Licking River within sight of the county Courthouse, Raccoon Creek is the force that has shaped most of the human history of our immediate area, and no small amount of the natural history as well.

It riffles across the Raccoon Shale at the lowest point it follows in Granville Township, within reach of the bike path. This geologic stratum is a member of the Cuyahoga Formation, and so is somewhere between 344 and 355 million years old, with the Dugway & Buena Vista Members just downstream, all part of the Mississippian subperiod of the Carboniferous era, and yes that means there's coal to our east, but you knew that.

At least it means we can ground our area at around 350 million years ago, and build from there: Black Hand Sandstone (good for building courthouses and such), flint beds to the southeast and some later sandstones to our north, as Africa ran into North America to our east and squeezed up the Alleghenies before tectonically drifting away, leaving our part of the continent to sigh deeply and settle down just in time for a long glacial nap.

After the glaciers retreated, you start to see some valleys carved out of the post-glacial landscape. It's not as dramatic as the Grand Canyon, but every time I drive back into Licking County along Rt. 161, just past Rt. 310, I find the view quite stirring. From the left as you head east, curving around in front of you, is the valley of Raccoon Creek, from its upland source now into a wide valley a few hundred feet deep. From the 310 overpass you slowly dive into that valley, past Rt. 37 and finally down next to Raccoon Creek itself, and shadowing that watercourse all the way into Newark proper.

But the watershed it drains runs well to the north, the uplands where Lobdell Run comes down out of the hills, and not quite so far south, where Moots Run winds north into the larger creek.

Living in Granville, most of us live in the Raccoon Creek watershed. We may not draw our water straight from the banks, nor do our washing there, but the hydrology on the surface is very important for the wells from which we do drink, and then we of course discharge our effluent (what a great euphemism!) into Raccoon Creek and on downstream. But who is upstream?

If you take that parcel so much discussed, the Intel property and the $100 billion-with-a-b investment into fabrication plants, and you draw a diagonal across it from northwest to southeast, the northern half of that land drains into Kyber Run, thence into Raccoon Creek, and on to our doorstep. Intel is upstream, and we are already connected.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's interested in watersheds even if they don't put them on most maps. Tell him about what downstream effects you're aware of at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.