Geology
~450 Mya Ordovician limestone and shale.
Epoch
Late Ordovician (Cincinnatian Series).
Native lands
Hopewell tradition · Shawnee (Shawanwaki) · Myaamia (Miami); Benham Mound, an 8-foot Hopewell burial mound within the park with recovered mica indicating long-distance trade networks, listed on the National Register of Historic Places 1974; Adena culture earthworks documented throughout Hamilton County; Shawnee and Miami held the Ohio River valley at European contact; ceded Ohio lands via Treaty of Greenville 1795 following Battle of Fallen Timbers 1794.
Displacement & Tenure
Cession 11: Treaty of Greene Ville (1795); former 275-acre estate of Herbert Greer French, bequeathed to the Cincinnati Park Board upon French's death in 1942, including the brick manor house; land was part of the John Cleves Symmes Congressional land purchase of the 1790s.
Shadow History
The Benham Mound within the park, a Hopewell burial mound listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974, was excavated by local residents in the late 19th century; the diggings recovered mica deposits, stone tools, axes, scrapers, chisels, and flint projectile points; no institutional repository for the recovered material and no record of human remains from these excavations have been identified in accessible records; Herbert Greer French, who bequeathed the estate to the Cincinnati Park Board in 1942, was a vice president of Procter and Gamble.
Ecology
Mixed mesophytic forest with oak-hickory woodlands, beech-maple slopes, and pawpaw thickets; meadow and prairie patches support pollinators; creek corridor hosts sycamore and tulip-poplar with exposed Ordovician fossil beds.
Hydrology
Amberley Creek flows through the park, a tributary of Mill Creek, which drains 166 square miles of Hamilton County to the Ohio River; creek bed exposes fossiliferous Ordovician limestone.
