St. Anne's Woods and Wetlands — Public Lands Institute

Geology

Ordovician450 Mya

~450 Mya Upper Ordovician shale and fossiliferous limestone (Kope Formation, Cincinnatian Series); Ohio River alluvium at site

Epoch

Late Ordovician (Cincinnatian)

Native lands

Adena (c. 1000 BC-100 AD) and Hopewell (c. 200 BC-500 AD) cultures present in Ohio River valley; Fort Ancient culture (c. 1000-1650 AD) maintained villages along the Ohio River and major Northern Kentucky tributaries; Shawandasse Tula (Shawanwaki/Shawnee) ranged through Northern Kentucky as hunting territory in the historic period; Ohio River corridor a contested boundary zone between multiple nations through the mid-18th century; Shawnee ceded regional lands via Treaty of Greene Ville (August 3, 1795)

Displacement & Tenure

Northern Kentucky is outside the federal-domain Royce cession system. Virginia created Kentucky County 1776 and enacted the Virginia Land Act 1779, opening Kentucky to land warrants and grants; Campbell County established 1794; Kentucky statehood 1792; the Congregation of Divine Providence acquired the land c. 1908 and established St. Anne's Convent 1919; the Diocese of Covington purchased the convent building in 2013 while the Campbell County Conservation District purchased the wetlands (165 acres) in September 2013 using a Kentucky Heritage Land Conservation Fund grant; a perpetual conservation easement is held by the Commonwealth of Kentucky

Shadow History

The land was donated in 1909 by Catholic layman Peter O'Shaughnessy to the Sisters of Divine Providence; the prior ownership chain and any antebellum land history remain undocumented in public records.

Ecology

Old-growth American beech (Fagus grandifolia) forest and Ohio River floodplain depression wetlands; one of the last undisturbed wetland remnants along the Ohio River in Northern Kentucky, documented by botanist E. Lucy Braun (University of Cincinnati) in 1916 as "the best depression forest on the Ohio River floodplain"; 451 total plant and animal species recorded including Jefferson's salamander (Ambystoma jeffersonianum), wood frog (Lithobates sylvaticus), spinulose woodfern (Dryopteris carthusiana), and American copper butterfly

Hydrology

Ohio River floodplain; site drains directly to the Ohio River; seasonal depression wetlands (vernal pools) fill from snowmelt and spring precipitation and dry by summer; no named tributary creek within the preserve boundaries

Acreage

165

GPS

39.0343° N, 84.3708° W

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