Marion, Ohio County Park District

09/13/2026

🌿 Lots of exciting things are happening this week with the Marion County Park District! We have a busy few days ahead, and there are plenty of opportunities to get outside, learn something new, meet up with us, and enjoy your Marion County Parks. Here’s what’s coming up!

🎨 Wednesday, September 16: The Marion Tallgrass Trail Nature Center will be open from 4–6 PM. We’ll have a FREE craft or activity for kids, so stop in, explore the Nature Center, and spend a little time with us!

📸 Thursday, September 17, is a busy day!

We’ll start the morning with our Fall Photography Hike at the Marion Tallgrass Trail trailhead at 8 AM. Bring your camera or simply use your phone, and come enjoy a morning on the trail while we look for and photograph some of the beautiful sights of early fall. 🍂📷

Later that day, our Park Board meeting will take place at noon at the Marion County Building, 222 W. Center St., downstairs in the Prospect Meeting Room. These meetings are open to the public and are a great opportunity to learn more about what’s happening with your parks and to share your ideas, questions, or concerns. We’d love to hear from you about places such as the Marion Tallgrass Trail, Terradise Nature Preserve, Greenspur, and Myers Woods.

Then, come see us at the last Downtown Marion Third Thursday event of 2026! We’ll be there from 4–7 PM, with festivities continuing into the evening. Stop by, say hello, and visit with us! 🎉

🦖 Saturday, September 19: Get ready to travel back millions of years for PALEONTOLOGY IN THE PARK, happening from 1–4:30 PM!

We’ll explore dinosaurs, prehistoric creatures, and the amazing animals that once roamed the Earth. We’ll also take a look at Marion County’s own prehistoric history, including the mammoth excavation site discovered right here in our area 50 years ago! 🦴🦕🌎

It’s going to be a fun prehistoric adventure for the entire family!

We hope you’ll join us at one of these events this week. There’s always something happening in your Marion County Parks! 🌳❤️

09/12/2026

While exploring the Marion Tallgrass Trail, you might spot numerous monarch butterflies resting in the trees. During their migration, these butterflies rely on dense shade and sheltered branches for protection against harsh elements like wind and rain. Check out this short video by Naturalist James Anderson to see these stunning pollinators in action!

09/11/2026

Yesterday, the Pleasant Local Schools after-school program joined us at the Marion Tallgrass Trail for a fun-filled field trip! Naturalist James led the group through a wildlife tracking program, where we learned how to identify animal tracks and signs before heading out onto the trail to put our skills to the test.

We discovered all kinds of interesting things along the way, but one of the biggest highlights was getting a glimpse of a young beaver near the first bridge! 🦫 What a great way to experience nature firsthand!

📚 Attention, Marion County Teachers! Did you know the Marion County Park District offers FREE nature programs for schools and classrooms? Naturalist James can bring a program directly to your classroom, or your class can visit one of our parks for a hands-on outdoor field trip. At the Tallgrass Trail, we can accommodate groups of up to approximately 50 students. We offer programs for all grade levels and work to correlate our programs with Ohio curriculum standards, making them a great way to take learning outside the classroom while helping students connect with the natural world around them.

If you’re a teacher,or know a teacher,who would like to learn more about our free nature programs, reach out to the Marion County Park District. We’d love to help you Go Out and Explore Your Marion County Parks! 🌿

09/11/2026

We have a lot of birds migrating through! A great way to help them is turn your lights off at night. A lot of people don’t realize that many of our songbirds migrate at night and use stars constellations as a guide. Unfortunately, lit up cities can look a lot like stars and throw the birds off course.

LIGHTS OUT! A huge nocturnal migration of birds is underway across Michigan, Indiana and Ohio! The migrating birds are so densely concentrated, NEXRAD Doppler Radar is detecting it all and mistakenly interprets the birds as a moderate to heavy rain storm or snow storm! But, there is no rain here, the nearest rain is in southwest and central Ohio.

This is by far the largest bird migration of the season across Michigan with over 27,000,000 birds in migration, and nearly 500,000,000 nationwide. The average altitude of the migration is 2,500 feet, which is easily detected by weather Doppler radar. The flood of the migration is moving south/southeast at 25 mph into Indiana and Ohio.

PLEASE: Turn OFF non-essential outdoor lights. Light pollution can disorient, disrupt and even harm the precious millions of migrating birds!

09/10/2026

Yesterday’s Monarch Hike didn’t quite go as planned! We had two wonderful people join us, but unfortunately, the rain came down pretty hard, so we didn’t make it very far down the Marion Tallgrass Trail. 🌧️🦋

Even with the rain, we still managed to spot two monarchs making their way through the trail! And just when we thought the rain was putting a damper on the evening, we came across these beautiful deer near the first bridge, hunkered down and waiting out the storm. 🦌

Sometimes nature has a way of changing our plans and giving us something unexpected instead. Even a rainy evening on the trail can bring some pretty special encounters. When it rains, nature provides! 🌧️🌿

09/09/2026

We would like to thank Lola Pryor for capturing some great nature photos from the Yoder Praire, out at the The Ohio State University Marion Campus.

09/06/2026

A fun documentary that naturalist James made for the Prairie Festival.

🌾 **Exploring the Sandusky Plains: The Prairies of Marion County** ...

09/06/2026

🌿🦋 AN EXCITING WEEK WITH THE PARK DISTRICT! 🦋🌿

We’ve got a couple of fun opportunities coming up this week, and we’d love for you to join us! Get outside, explore nature, and learn something new with the Marion County Park District. 🌳

🦋 MONARCH HIKE
📅 Wednesday, September 9
⏰ 5:00 PM
📍 Marion Tallgrass Trail Trailhead

The monarchs are beginning their amazing fall migration, and we’re heading out onto the trail to see what we can discover! Come walk with us as we search for monarchs and learn more about these incredible butterflies, their migration, and why the Marion Tallgrass Trail can be an important stop along their journey.

🍂 NATURE CENTER OPEN + BUCKEYE NECKLACES
📅 Thursday, September 10
⏰ 5:00–7:00 PM
📍 Marion Tallgrass Trail Nature Center

Stop by the Nature Center and make your very own Buckeye necklace! 🌰 This is a fun, hands-on activity for all ages, and supplies will be available while they last!

Whether you’re interested in monarchs, Buckeyes, or simply getting outside, we hope you’ll come spend some time with us this week! 🌿

Come explore, learn, and enjoy the outdoors with us! 💚

09/06/2026

We know we’ve been talking a lot about everything that happened today at our First Annual Prairie Festival, but we wanted to highlight one of the really cool parts of the day! 🌾

Gale Martin gave a fascinating talk about some of the unique history of the Sandusky Plains. Many of you may remember Gale from her time as the director of the Marion County Historical Society. With her wealth of knowledge about local Marion County history, along with her passion for native plants, she was the perfect person to help us explore the stories behind this incredible landscape.

Thank you, Gale, for educating us and sharing so many interesting stories about the history that took place across the Sandusky Plains! We’re grateful you were part of our first Prairie Festival. 🌱

🎥 If you would like to watch Gale’s presentation, please click the link!

And while you’re there, make sure to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel to keep up-to-date on all the fun and educational content we put out there! 🌿📚

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

09/05/2026

🌿✨ THAT’S A WRAP ON THE FIRST ANNUAL PRAIRIE FESTIVAL! ✨🌿

Well, everyone… we officially did it! 🎉 The first-ever Prairie Festival was a tremendous success, and we couldn’t be more excited about how the day turned out!

We believe more than 100 people came out to celebrate prairies, pollinators, native plants, and the incredible natural resources we have right here in Marion County! 🌼🦋🌾 We even had people travel from Crawford County, and the farthest attendee we know of came all the way from Findlay! That means so much to us!

One of our biggest hopes for this event was to create greater awareness and appreciation for native plants, but especially for prairies and the incredible history of the Sandusky Plains. Many people may not realize that much of Marion County was once part of this vast prairie landscape. We hope today gave people an opportunity to learn more about these unique ecosystems, why they are so important, and why protecting and restoring what remains is so valuable. 🌾💚

There were SO many incredible groups, organizations, vendors, and individuals who helped make today possible, and we want to say a huge THANK YOU to every single one of you! ❤️

A special shout-out to Natives in Harmony Plant Nursery for joining us and offering beautiful native plants for people to take home and add to their own gardens. 🌱 And thank you to the food trucks that came out and kept everyone fueled throughout the day! 🌮🍔

We also want to give a HUGE thank-you to the North Central Pollinator Pathway for all of their hard work helping put this event together. It truly takes a community to make something like this happen, and we’re already considering bringing the Prairie Festival back next year! 👀🌿

And we certainly can’t forget to thank Marion City Schools Athletic Director Sean Kearns for allowing us to host this event at Marion Harding High School. We greatly appreciate the opportunity to bring everyone together!

Most importantly, THANK YOU to everyone who came out today! Whether you attended for the plants, the prairie, the pollinators, the food, the educational activities, or simply to enjoy a beautiful day outside, you helped make our first Prairie Festival one to remember! 💚

Now we want to hear from YOU! 👇

🌿 What was your favorite part of the festival?
🌱 What would you like to see us add or change for next year?

Drop your thoughts in the comments below! We’d love to hear your ideas as we look toward making the Second Annual Prairie Festival even bigger and better! 🌾✨

THANK YOU, MARION COUNTY! 💚