Blue Hen Falls, Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Ohio

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Blue Hen Falls, Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Ohio

There is only one national park in Ohio, so they went all out with Cuyahoga Valley. It’s unique among the 59 national parks in the US for a variety of reasons, not least because Cuyahoga Valley includes working farms within the park’s boundaries. Much of the park’s land had been, or was in danger of, becoming urbanised, with historic farms lost to development. As the National Park Service, and groups within Ohio, began identifying potential park land, they found that the farms were some of the least developed parcels in the region. How to get around that? Include them in the park’s boundaries.