Are Ohio State Parks Free?

Ohio’s state parks and nature preserves are huge, numerous and delightful—treasures that Columbus Month-to-month celebrates in our June cowl story. On this function, we spotlight a broad vary of actions and facilities you may get pleasure from on state public lands, from mushroom foraging to bird-watching. However maybe essentially the most distinctive attribute is that this: Ohio is one in every of simply seven states that fees no entrance charges to its parks.

To no shock, this coverage, which dates to the founding of the park system in 1949, is well-liked with the general public. Parks officers, nevertheless, have extra combined emotions. Whereas working for former Ohio Gov. George Voinovich within the Nineteen Nineties, Mary Mertz, the state’s present Ohio Division of Pure Sources director, mentioned with then-state parks chief Glen Alexander the potential for instituting an admission charge, which might have offered the state company with a dependable funding stream. Voinovich wasn’t within the thought again then, Mertz says, neither is her present boss, Gov. Mike DeWine. “Retaining the parks free in order that it’s a chance for completely everybody in Ohio to exit and revel in them is actually central to what we do,” Mertz says.

Information to Ohio State Parks:Uncover Ohio’s Huge and Various State Parks and Nature Preserves

Certainly, one of many oldest classes in Ohio politics isn’t restrict entry to state parks. Working example: the 1974 governor’s race. In an election that noticed Democrats sweep into workplace throughout the nation due to the Watergate scandal, Ohio’s Democratic governor, John Gilligan, misplaced to Republican Jim Rhodes—an upset many attribute partially to Gilligan’s resolution to quickly shut state parks as a cost-cutting measure.

Gilligan’s successors have taken that lesson to coronary heart, and the park system has remained free whilst funding has fluctuated. And whereas Mertz and her ODNR colleagues have benefited in recent times from elevated funding, she acknowledges that constant income stays a long-term problem for the system. To that finish, she launched in 2021 the Ohio State Parks Basis, an impartial nonprofit targeted on defending and enhancing state parks by donations from non-public sources. She’s recruited legal professionals, conservationists and a former governor, Bob Taft, to serve on the muse’s board, in addition to hiring Lisa Daris, former director of the Ohio to Erie Path, to guide the group.

The reality is there isn’t any such factor as a “free” park. If entrance charges aren’t offering income, the state should discover different methods to take care of its pure treasures.

This story is from the June 2022 concern of Columbus Month-to-month.