Countdown to Junction, the Auction Story

countdown
to junction
Twenty days before the auction, on the far side of the globe.
The email carrying the news of the sale of Junction Works
reached me in South Africa on a steamy afternoon in late February, 2014. I was gratefully taking a working vacation on
the other side of the equator from the frigid blasts of Arctic
air pummeling Ohio. Though residing in a simple cabin in the
middle of an immense wildlife refuge, I continued to stay in
close contact with my Ohio networks, thanks to a modern satellite mounted on the thatched roof. Outside my window, I was
half listening to the metallic drone of cicadas, the ever present
chant of a cape turtle dove (“work harder, work harder,” they
urge), and the soft grunting of a family of warthogs, when I decided to check my email. Ohioans, 7 hours behind, were just
beginning to stir in their offices. When I read the news, I shook
my head in disbelief. “Chillicothe’s Junction Earthworks on the
auction block—March 18.” That was only twenty days away!
Prime Development Land. I looked up the auction
on-line. One glance at the parcel map illustrated Junction’s vulnerable location. The 400-acre property was situated directly
across the road from a densely populated housing development on the southern boundary of Chillicothe’s urban growth.
To the north of the farm was unbroken city; to the south, rolling Appalachian hill country. I knew there would be one or
more well-funded developers standing at the auction block, as
well as farmers riding the wave of high corn prices.
A Hopeless Project. I morbidly ticked off all of Junction’s insolvable problems. One, although a round of Clean Ohio
grant funding was coming up in April that could theoretically
award 75% funding to the project, the auction map showed the
sellers retaining the riverfront corridor. Without river front-
By
Nancy Stranahan
Director
Arc of Appalachia
age, the grant submission would score miserably. Two, the 89acre earthwork tract alone could go for over $600,000, and the
entire farm over two million. Even if Clean Ohio funding could
be acquired somehow, raising the required 25% match in such
a short period of time would be impossible. Three, if by some
miracle the matching funds were raised in the next 20 days,
standard contract closing dates were 30 days following an auction. That would precede Clean Ohio funding by months. Four,
there would be no guarantee that even a high scoring Clean
Ohio grant would be selected and approved. Bidding at auction
on the basis of an uncertain grant would be a high stakes gamble. I glumly ticked off my last finger. Five, the project was coming too quickly to even consider the Arc’s involvement. There
were enough worthy land projects on my desk to keep me busy
for months, if not years. I closed the email, and wrote to my colleagues that we would be sitting this one out. I steeled myself
to the inevitability of one more ancient Native American site
disappearing beneath the bulldozers.
Eighteen Days Before Auction.
Despite my better judgement, I found myself pondering
the Junction project at three in the morning. I recalled the
first time I fell in love with Paint Creek when I was only 18
years of age. On that particular day, I had climbed to the top
of Copperas Mountain, a spectacular hillside of exposed shale
that towered majestically above Paint Creek. Looking upward
from the base of the cliff, the air stinging my nose with the acrid smell of heavy salts, the rock exposure was so tall that the
circling turkey vultures and scrub pines at the very top looked
like toy miniatures. The breath-heaving climb to the ridgetop
that followed presented a vista that still burns in my mind forty two years later. Before me was an incomprehensibly large
flat floodplain filled with corn, flanked by two rows of blue Appalachian hills, and dissected by the sensuous sinews of Paint
Creek, shining in the sun. I could almost see American Indian
villages tending their plots of maize, smell the smoke of campfires, and catch the wafting of a language native to this place. To
say I was stricken by this view would be a serious understatement. The day’s experience had a lot to do with the founding of
the Arc of Appalachia nearly twenty years later, initially formed
to save the lower watershed of one of Paint Creek’s most outstanding tributaries, the Rocky Fork Gorge. Thus was the Highlands Nature Sanctuary conceived, which today serves as the
Arc’s headquarters and is the largest preserve in our system.
As the night hours continued to march by without sleep,
other collages of Paint Creek floated through my mind. Stacks
of softshell turtles sunning on a sandbar. Bald eagles diving on
rafts of migrating ducks. Cerulean warblers, cedar waxwings,
and yellow throated warblers singing from giant sycamore
trees. Little Copperas Mountain overlooking Seip Mound, its
shale exposures rimmed with hemlocks. Falls-o-Paint, an enchanting rapids on Falls Road. Shells of endangered mollusks,
their pearly interiors luminescent in the sun.
I also recalled a waterway course the Arc offered a few
Paint Creek vista from the bridge at Rapid Forge Road.
years back. We spent our last day seining the Paint, not far, as
it turned out, from Junction Works. In the last ten mile run of
Paint Creek, before it reaches the Scioto, Paint Creek rebounds
from agriculture’s high impact upstream. In these last river
miles, the waterway earns Ohio EPA’s highest designation:
exceptional warmwater habitat. As we counted the fish in our
seines, I was astounded to see the tally approaching forty species. They were all handsome animals, but the one I remember
most, and the one that became a signature species in my mind
for Paint Creek’s conservation, was the Tippecanoe darter. I
wondered how something so beautiful could have gone so long
unrecognized by the general public. This gorgeous fish, less
than two inches long, was, and still is, threatened in Ohio.
The Great Eastern Forest of the United States, of which
Ohio holds a central place, has several biological attributes
of world significance, nearly all of them aquatic. The East,
for instance, collectively shelters the greatest concentration
of salamander, stonefly and crayfish species in all the world.
Thanks to the East’s fecundity, North America boasts 10% of
the world’s turtle species, and one of the greatest concentration of fresh-water mussels.
Most nature lovers, if asked to come up with an icon species for the Great Eastern Forest, however, think of warblers.
Warblers are tiny insect-eating birds endemic to the Americas.
Each spring they sweep up from the tropics and repopulate
our local deciduous forests and boreal forests all the way to
Canada. Warblers not only provide service to the Great Eastern
Forest by keeping insect populations in check, but they do it in
style, glowing in a rainbow of colors.
What many nature lovers don’t know, is that there is a
rainbow counterpart to warblers hiding beneath the surface of
our rivers and streams. These animal species are also insecteaters, but unlike warblers, they are strictly endemic to North
America. These are the darters. In exceptionally clean creeks,
darters can become so abundant that they anchor an aquatic
system’s web of life. Seven of the Lower Paint’s total fish species are darters.
North America boasts 175 darter species. Not surprisingly,
darters’ greatest diversity is expressed in the East, where our
waterways are numerous and our rainfall generous. Many of
them are shockingly brilliant, earning such common epithets
as candy, lollipop, lipstick, Christmas and harlequin darters.
The Lower Paint is one of Ohio’s most important waters.
Notable aquatic species that have been recorded here include
northern madtom, a tiny state-endangered catfish; goldeye,
also state-endangered; Slenderhead Darter, Bluebreast Darter;
and Streamline chub and the snuffbox freshwater mussel, both
federally and state-endangered.
The Rainbow Darter is one of the more common darter
species in Ohio’s highest quality creeks. It is one of the most
beautiful of them all—a jewel of clean waters.
The most fascinating darter in the lower Paint Creek is the
Eastern Sand Darter, a species of special concern in Ohio. It
it has virtually no scales on the ventral side of its body and
spends most of its time buried in the sand up to its eyes.
At five in the morning, my overactive mind thankfully be-
Of all the darters, the Tippecanoe is the smallest—the
hummingbird of the darter tribe. A two inch individual
would be a large specimen.
gan to finally dim. The last thing I remembered seeing in my
mind’s eye was a Tippecanoe darter caught in a dripping net,
its colors flashing in the sun. As I quickly lowered the magical
animal back to safe waters, I drifted back to sleep.
Sixteen Days Before Auction.
I loaded my packed bags into a dusty land rover and began the long journey home from Zululand to Ohio. Before I
departed, I sent an email to the small Coalition of nonprofits
that had joined together to save Junction Works. I told them I
had changed my mind. I promised that as soon as I returned to
Ohio, I would see if the riverside parcel might be purchased directly from the owners, outside the public auction, and thereby
make the project eligible for Clean Ohio. I tried not to concentrate on how impossible the rest of the steps seemed.
Two Days Before Auction.
Working as part of Junction Coalition over the last fourteen days has been the most amazing, challenging, and stressful time of my entire life. Because there was insufficient time to
hold committee meetings and sculpt detailed action steps, we
A fairly common darter in the Paint watershed is the greenside, which shines like an emerald in the spring. It is an
unusually large species, commonly over four inches long.
Darter photos generously provided by Uland Thomas.
were thrown into a sort of orderly chaos, each of us listening to
our own impulses and acting on our own hunches. It was as if
we were six draft horses charged with plowing a field, without
harnesses, without reins, and with blinders on. We could see
our common destination, but we never completely knew what
rows our colleagues were working on. We had to just hope and
pray we didn’t leave some essential part of the field unturned.
In the previous 24 hours, the story of the Junction auction
went viral across the state and pledges began pouring into the
Arc’s website. We had successfully contacted the sellers a week
ago, and miraculously, they were open to selling the river corridor directly to the Arc, making the project eligible for a Clean
Ohio grant submission. They also generously agreed to delay
closing until the Clean Ohio funds arrived, should we be the
winning bidder. I self-scored our grant, using the Clean Ohio
scoring criteria, and it looked unbeatable—scoring far higher
than any of the eight winning projects the Arc had submitted
in the past. With any luck, we would be bidding at the auction!
How much land we could buy now depended upon the number
of pledges that were still coming in. However, with the clock
ticking, none of the three sellers had yet actually signed the
purchase offer contract for the river corridor. It was worrisome. It looked like we might run out of time.
Auction Night in Chillicothe. Before the bidding starts, an auction staff member checks in with our Coalition to see if we have questions. Photo courtesy of Tom Engberg. Highway Sign of the Future. With the help of computer graphics, here’s how the highway
sign might look when the day comes that Chillicothe claims its place in the world, not only as the first capital of modern day Ohio,
but the epicenter of ancient civilizations. Photo courtesy of Heartland Earthworks Conservancy.
Ground Zero,
6:00 pm, March 28, 2014, Chillicothe
On just day 7 of the Arc’s web-based campaign drive, our
pledge thermometer nudges the $300,000 mark and is still rising. I am beholding a miracle. I depart to town thinking that it
is likely we can bid on the two woodland tracts as well as the
earthworks tract. At 5:58 pm I sit down in a room packed with
over one hundred and fifty people in downtown Chillicothe. I
slide the river corridor contract, signed by all three sellers just
minutes before, into my briefcase with a sigh of relief. Without those signatures, I would have had to turn around and go
home. The auction begins. For the first time I really feel the
tenuousness of our position. We will be bidding on the strength
of pledges not yet turned into cash, and a grant not yet written
nor approved. With my hands noticeably shaking, surrounded
by friends and colleagues of the Coalition; I open my laptop to
track our bids, and try to concentrate on the proceedings.
Because the farm tracts are to be sold separately; as well
as in any combination at any time during the auction, we know
we could win the earthworks tract in one moment only to lose
it the next. In the worst case scenario, we could actually end
up owning the woodlands without the earthworks! I wince as I
imagine a housing development with a masonry entrance sign
proclaiming, New Junction Acres.
The earthwork tract is first in the bidding process. The bidding goes amazingly quickly, and soon the Coalition’s bidding
number is up on the chalkboard at $650,000. The large farm
field goes next and we wait it out, since it is definitely out of
our reach. Woodland tracts #3 and #4 are come next. Tract #4
goes as expected and we are its top bidder, but Tract #3 is giving us big trouble. A housing developer obviously wants it very
badly and the bids bounce back and forth like a championship
ping-pong game, leaving our budget in the dust. The bidding
stops at $100,000, and we are still on top. Five minutes later,
the bidding starts up again and goes so fast I can barely keep
up with the computer entries. I tap my colleague on his elbow
to tell him to stop bidding, as it is going way too high, but the
message doesn’t get across. When the bidding war ceases, we
are still on top with the daunting figure of $150,000 for an 18
acre tract. I feel dizzy. If the bidding starts up on the earthwork
tract again, we could run out of money and lose it entirely.
After over an hour of bidding, silence reigns in the room
packed with bankers, farmers, land investors, financial advisors, developers, and curious onlookers. The chalkboard
shows the Coalition as the winning bidder for each of our desired three tracts. The realtor raises his gavel theatrically and
encourages people to begin another round of bidding on any
tract, or on any combination of tracts. He begs, pleads, cajoles
and jokes. The gavel swings in the air like a sorcerer’s wand,
taunting the listeners. The crowd fidgets in silence. I realize I
am holding my breath and my pulse is pounding in my head so
loudly I can’t think. When the gavel finally comes down with a
bang, I can not imagine a more welcome and satisfying sound.
Coalition members and friends erupt with a howl of victory,
along with laughter, hugs, and tears.
As I drive home in the darkness that night, I reflect upon
how the work to create a new nature preserve and a Native
American legacy park in Chillicothe is far from over. Tomorrow
and in the weeks to come there will be a great deal of work—
more fund raising, writing the all-important Clean Ohio grant,
community and coalition meetings, and countless other details.
But tonight is a night of celebration. I breathe deeply and allow
myself a few peaceful hours to soak in this exciting day’s conclusion, representing what is quite possibly one of the greatest
a
grassroots conservation victories in the history of Ohio.