Written by Leslie Wagner, Historian
A trip to the Big Cypress Swamp in the Everglades likely reminded Beman of a letter from State Forester Edmund Seacrest in 1925 suggesting plantings of bald-cypress trees in a boggy spot on the grounds. Beman decided to try his own cypress swamp on his property by purchasing bald-cypress trees from the Marietta State Nursery in Reno, Ohio in 1928 and finished installation in 1930.
The Cypress Swamp is a manmade facsimile of a southern cypress swamp using southern native bald-cypress with a wooden boardwalk to walk over the swampland. It is one of the most northern reproducing cypress swamps in the country.