Qualla: Strouds Run State Park

Strouds Run State Park: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jaknouse, CC BY 3.0. Strouds Run starts as a quiet creek meandering through the wooded hills east of Athens, Ohio. In 1960, the state finished building a dam across it. The water backed up across a small valley and turned into Dow Lake - 161 acres of impounded water surrounded by 2,606 acres of forest, hiking trails, and the kind of campground where the same families return for decades. The park abuts the city of Athens on its eastern edge; in several places, the park boundary and the Athens city limit are the same line. Strouds Run is, in effect, the city of Athens's own backyard - a state park you can walk to from Ohio University's College Green, where the steep ridges and Appalachian hollow geography of southeastern Ohio begin again immediately after the last block of houses.

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Image: Jaknouse | CC BY 3.0

Strouds Run State Park: From State Forest to State Park

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MissvainOriginal author: Dan Molter (shroomydan), CC BY-SA 3.0. The land was acquired piece by piece in the 1940s and 1950s as part of the Athens State Forest - one of the smaller working forests Ohio assembled in the wake of the Depression and the New Deal era of conservation. Pieces had been logged hard in the nineteenth century and partial...

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Image: MissvainOriginal author: Dan Molter (shroomydan) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Strouds Run State Park: Dow Lake

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dan Molter (shroomydan), CC BY-SA 3.0. The lake is named for C.L. Dow, a professor of geography and geology at Ohio University who championed the idea of a park and lake here beginning in 1942. At 161 acres, it is not large by Ohio standards - significantly smaller than nearby Burr Oak Lake, much smaller than Lake Eri...

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Image: Dan Molter (shroomydan) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Strouds Run State Park: Fifteen Miles of Trails

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jaknouse at en.wikipedia, Public domain. What makes Strouds Run feel larger than its acreage is the trail network. Fifteen miles of hiking trails wind through the hills above the lake, with elevation gains of two to three hundred feet between the lake shore and the ridge tops. The trails offer the kind of dense Appalach...

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Image: Jaknouse at en.wikipedia | Public domain

Strouds Run State Park: What the Park Means to Athens

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dan Molter (shroomydan), CC BY-SA 3.0. For a college town surrounded by national forest, having a state park immediately at its eastern edge is a peculiar kind of luxury. Ohio University students can run trails before class. Faculty can take seminars on flora identification in spring. Local families have a swimming be...

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Image: Dan Molter (shroomydan) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Strouds Run State Park: Flying Over the Pocket Wild

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jaknouse, CC BY-SA 3.0. From the air, Strouds Run reads as a lobed green inkblot pressed against the eastern edge of Athens. The lake is the obvious feature - a long, narrow water surface bending around the contours of the dammed valley, with the dam visible at the western end. Forested ridges rise on e...

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Image: Jaknouse | CC BY-SA 3.0