Visiting the Arc Preserves
Photo by Rick Braveheart
Highlands Nature Sanctuary
Bainbridge, Highland County
At 3000 acres, the Sanctuary is the largest and oldest of the Arc’s preserves, as well as the organization’s headquarters. It offers over 16 miles of beautiful hiking trails. In the preserve’s heart is the sheer-walled limestone gorge of the Rocky Fork in a karst landscape filled with rock formations, cliffs, springs, and grottos. The Sanctuary offers several overnight lodging options and the Appalachian Forest Museum, which interprets the world significance of the nation’s Eastern Hardwood Forests. Although most Sanctuary trails prohibit dogs, a few are dog-friendly. Click on photo for deeper information.
Location: 7660 Cave Road, Bainbridge, OH 45612
Download Trail Map with directions.
Chalet Nivale
Peebles, Adams County
Chalet Nivale is an outstanding botanical site showcasing plants adapted to its alkaline bedrock and soils, some of which are quite rare. Trails meander through the moist, shaded hollows carved out by two crystal-clear streams that have sculpted the bedrock into mossy slump blocks, intriguing outcrops, and vertical cliffs. This is Ohio karst country at its best. boasting many rare botanicals. Chalet Nivale is known for its splendid spring wildflower displays including the rare snow trillium. Trilliums, anemones, and hepaticas abound. Dogs are not permitted at Chalet Nivale.
Location: 1272 Bacon Flat Rd, Peebles, OH 45660
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Junction Earthworks
Chillicothe, Ross County
The Junction-Steel Earthworks Preserve features an arc of several 2000-year-old Native American earthworks that are being selectively mowed to make them more visible. The preserve offers several miles of hiking trails, and a 70-acre native prairie providing spectacular summer wildflowers and rare grassland birds. Before you go, be sure to download the free phone app called Junction Earthworks Trail Tour, which provides a three-dimensional view of Junction’s ancient architecture on your phone as you stroll through the 20-acre ancient ceremonial site. Dogs are permitted on a 6-foot leash.
Location: 1143 Township Hwy 377, Chillicothe, OH 45601
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Ohio Hanging Rock
Wheelersburg, Scioto County
Ohio Hanging Rock is a 750-acre preserve in remote NE Scioto County. Trails lead from valley floor to upper-elevation ridgetops that are strewn with large rocks, and covered with mosses, ferns, and lichens. A 4.4-mile loop trail takes hikers below rock shelters, through narrow ravines, and into labyrinths of beautiful rock formations. This boulder-strewn landscape was once the wave-washed shoreline of a vast freshwater lake during the Pleistocene. Most of the hills of the region were underwater, but the highest ridges dotted the surface as thousands of islands. Dogs are permitted on a 6-foot leash.
Location: Frederick Rd Wheelersburg, Ohio 45694
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Gladys Riley Golden Star Lily Preserve
Otway, Scioto County
The Golden Star Lily is an early April wildflower that is endangered in Ohio and extremely rare throughout its limited geographical range. In Ohio, it only grows in abundance in the immediate region of this 185-acre preserve. Gladys Riley features two trails - one leading through the wildflower-rich floodplain of the Rocky Fork of Scioto Brush Creek, and the other to an oak-hickory hillside forest with trees of impressive girth. The preserve features many interesting trees including yellow buckeye, white walnut, and black birch. Dogs are not permitted.
Location: Tick Ridge-Koenig Hill Rd, Otway, OH 45657
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Quiverheart Gorge
Peebles, Adams County
Quiverheart Gorge protects an astonishingly deep dolomite gorge in northwestern Adams County in a region better known for its rolling short grass prairies than its deep valleys. The fact that this gorge is an unexpected landscape feature makes it all the more remarkable and treasured. During the rainy season, Quiverheart has the largest and most beautiful waterfall in the Arc of Appalachia preserve system. The rock formations of Quiverheart are diverse and varied, providing hikers with dramatic scenery around every corner. Dogs are not permitted.
Location: 2199 State Route 781, Peebles, OH 45660
Download Trail Guide with directions & Natural History
The Appalachian Front
Visit more hiking destinations in the five-county region known as the Appalachian Front.
Fort Hill Earthworks
Hillsboro, Highland County
The preserve protects a 2000-year-old large earthen-walled ceremonial enclosure that circumscribes Fort Hill’s nearly level ridgetop, The sprawling earthwork was built by Native American Indians belonging to the Hopewell Culture roughly 2000 years ago. The 1400-acre preserve also shelters the largest mature forest in Ohio. Fort Hill is a hiker’s paradise with its limestone boulders and cliffs bordering the Baker Fork, stone arches, towering ancient trees, a high diversity of botanicals, and outstanding spring wildflower displays. Dogs are permitted on 6-foot leash.
Location: 13614 Fort Hill Rd, Hillsboro, OH 45133
Download Trail Guide with directions & Natural History
Chaparral Prairie
West Union, Adams County
Chaparral is a State Nature Preserve managed by the State of Ohio. In 2015, the Arc of Appalachia partnered with the Ohio Division of Natural Areas and Preserves, to successfully purchase a 60-acre property that nearly doubled Chaparral Prairie’s land holdings, bringing the preserve up to 130 acres in size. Chaparral Prairie has stunning prairie wildflower displays best enjoyed in late July and early August. Offered at the preserve are three loop hiking trails and one spur trail totaling 1.6 miles. Dogs are not permitted at Chaparral Prairie.
Location: 209 Hawk Hill Rd, West Union, OH 45693
Download Trail Guide with directions & Natural History
Samson/Obrist Woods
Beaver, Pike County
Samson/Obrist Woods is the only preserve in the Arc’s system created entirely by donation from benevolent landowners (not one, but two!). Nestled just north of the ancient Teays River Valley, the preserve projects a mature forest composed of oaks, maples, dogwoods, and sassafras trees. The hiking trail offers an abundance of ferns, a hemlock grove, towering oak trees, and a large natural recessed sandstone cave. Dogs are not permitted.
Location: 717 Posey Ridge Rd, Beaver, OH 45613
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Tremper Mound
McDermott, Scioto County
Tremper Mound protects a world-significant 2000-year-old Hopewell Earthwork near Portsmouth, Ohio. It lies just four miles north of what was once an immense Hopewell ceremonial complex developed on both banks of the Ohio River known today as the Portsmouth Works. It is one of only two mounds ever to cache what many people consider the pinnacle of Hopewell art - its sacred animal effigy pipes that captured a wide array of the wildlife community of the region. Dogs are not permitted.
Location: 20580 SR-73 McDermott, OH 45663
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Ohio River Bluffs
Manchester, Adams County
If Barrett’s Rim is the floral jewel of the Rocky Fork Gorge, then Ohio River Bluffs is surely the crowning gem of the entire Arc of Appalachia Preserve System. Nowhere else in the Arc is there such unrestrained wildflower exuberance. From the base of the bluffs facing the Ohio River, all the way to the top of the ridgetop, are solid tiers of wildflowers – wild hyacinths, bluebells, toadshade trilliums, twinleaf and dwarf larkspurs, just to name a few. Dogs are not permitted.
Location: 400 Gilkison Hollow Rd, Manchester, OH 45144
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Spruce Hill Earthworks
Chillicothe, Ross County
Spruce Hill Earthworks is best known for its stone wall outlining the rim of a steep-sided flat-topped hill that was built two thousand years ago by the Native American Hopewell Culture. It is the largest Hopewell hilltop earthworks ever discovered in the United States. The most important feature preserved on Spruce Hill is the aesthetic broad vista of the Valley from the top of the hill, certainly, the reason the Hopewell people chose this site for their ceremonial grounds. Dogs are permitted on a 6-foot leash.
Location: 576 Spruce Hill Rd, Chillicothe, OH 45601
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Rock Run
Stout, Adams County
Rock Run is an 802-acre Wilderness Preserve protecting the exceptionally deep ravine of Rock Run – a two-square-mile pristine watershed that flows directly into the Ohio River and is nearly completely protected within the boundaries of the Arc’s Rock Run preserve and Shawnee State Park holdings. A 3.3 mile loop trail takes hikers deep into the preserve. The 400-foot elevation difference between the region’s river and its ridgetops provides a landscape of extraordinary relief and outstanding panoramas. Dogs are permitted on a 6-foot leash.
Location: U.S. Rt 52, Stout, OH 45684
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Plum Run Prairie
Peebles, Adams County
Plum Run Prairie is one of the larger native prairies left in the state. The prairie is unusual in that it includes not only a Tall Grass Prairie Community, but it t also supports a globally rare community known as the Alkaline Shortgrass Prairie, or simply “Cedar Glades.” Many rare and unusual plants are sheltered in the preserve, as are an abundance of butterflies. One of the trails takes hikers along Plum Run waterway and woodlands, where spring wildflowers abound. Peak visitation times for prairie flowers is May, and again in August. Dogs are not permitted.
Location: Mendenhall Rd, Peebles, OH 45660
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Kamama Prairie
Peebles, Adams County
Kamama Prairie is a 192-acre preserve located in Adams County. The diverse habitats— xeric short grass prairies, recovering pastures, juniper-oak woodlands, exposed limestone boulders, cliff edges, and its seeps, springs, ponds, and streams—are responsible for the preserve’s grand and diverse explosion of life. Kamama Prairie is the crown jewel of the Arc’s biodiverse preserves, it shelters 27 state-listed rare and endangered plant species and 67 species that were previously state-listed. Dogs are not permitted at Kamama Prairire. Location: 778 Steam Furnace Road, Peebles OH 45660
Download Trail Guide with directions & Natural History