Falls of the Ohio State Park

The Falls of the Ohio State Park is the site of 386 million year old fossils from the Devonian. The 67 -acre State Park was established in 1990 and is accessible via Interstate 65. It is located on the Ohio River at Clarksville in Clark County in the U.S. state of Indiana.

The fossil beds were in prehistoric times seabed with corals and other organisms that were dropped after her death and covered by sediments. While retreating glaciers of the Ice Age, the outer layers were washed away and at the present time 89 ha exposed fossil sites are accessible at low tide. In these Jeffersonville Limestone formations more than 250 species of fossilized coral and over 600 different species fossils as brachiopods, arthropods, echinoderms, stromatoporoids, mollusks, and microbes have been found, including about two-thirds original descriptions.

The " Ohiofälle " are rapids with a slope of 8 m over a distance of 4 km stretch of river, the only barrier to the shipping in the river of the Ohio River. Most of the rapids is now in the dammed area behind the McAlpine Dam was built in 1920. George Rogers Clark, the elder brother of the explorer William Clark, founded in 1783, the city of Clarksville. The area of his home also belongs to the state park, even if the property is no longer maintained.

John James Audubon made ​​200 sketches of 14 bird species during his stay in the area, now 270 bird species have been recorded. In the large-scale flow section of the Ohio 130 fish species are listed, including endangered paddlefish.

At the visitor center offers various exhibitions on geology, history, cultural history and local history, with over 100 exhibits, as well as aquariums, classrooms, observation zones are housed for wildlife and viewing areas. In 2008, over 450,000 visitors were counted in a state park.