through the park’ s history files and visited local libraries in order to find some answers.
While working at Turkey Run State Park, I enrolled at Depauw University for a Master’ s degree in botany— a favorite discipline that would help with my work. When we moved to Brown County, I continued to take classes on my days off, and discovered more information about the park’ s ponds.
The ponds were installed by the DNR’ s Division of Fish and Game( now the Division of Fish and Wildlife) as a source of water for woodland species. Next to the pond, a clearing was created for a food plot planted in millet, milo, sorghum, and sunflowers. As late as the 1960s, Brown County State Park was one of many state and federal sites in southern Indiana for this Woodland Game Project, later called the Forest Wildlife Project.
I wanted to learn more about these secluded and nearly forgotten ponds, particularly since in addition to providing water, they were also breeding sites for frogs, toads, turtles, and salamanders. What kind of herptile production were the ponds experiencing? Was there any maintenance required to keep them viable, and how many were there on park property?
At his retirement, I interviewed Maury Reeves, one of the biologists who installed the ponds in the early 60s. He told me once a bulldozer operator and laborer found a suitable site, they dug it out, then moved on to another site the next day. One hundred ponds were installed on park property over three years. They were usually 50-60 feet in diameter and approximately six feet deep in the center. Dirt was pushed up creating an earthen dam and trees were stockpiled off to the side or used to reinforce the circular dam. The pond site was to be installed at the end of a long ridge before the land dropped off, with a site for the food plot nearby. Rainwater usually filled the pond within a year.
One summer, utilizing volunteer help, we compiled GPS coordinates of as many park ponds as possible. Many are still holding water. A few suffer from cattail encroachment and some show signs of horse impact, since they are close to backcountry horse trails where riders give horses a drink. A grad student study over three years monitored the production of aquatic species and was shared with other DNR managers whose properties also have
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