Fontenelle Forest is a

forest A forest is an area of land dominated by trees. Hundreds of definitions of forest are used throughout the world, incorporating factors such as tree density, tree height, land use, legal standing, and ecological function. The United Nations' ...

, located in Bellevue, Nebraska. Its visitor features include

hiking trails A trail, also known as a path or track, is an unpaved lane or small road usually passing through a natural area. In the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, a path or footpath is the preferred term for a pedestrian or hiking trail. Th ...

, a nature center, children's camps, a

gift shop A gift shop or souvenir shop is a store primarily selling souvenirs, memorabilia, and other items relating to a particular topic or theme. The items sold often include coffee mugs, stuffed animals, toys, t-shirts, postcards, handmade collec ...

, and picnic facilities. The forest is listed as a

National Natural Landmark The National Natural Landmarks (NNL) Program recognizes and encourages the conservation of outstanding examples of the natural history of the United States. It is the only national natural areas program that identifies and recognizes the best ...

and a National Historic District. The forest includes hardwood deciduous forest, extensive floodplain, loess hills, and marshlands.

History

After settlement by

Woodland culture In the classification of archaeological cultures of North America, the Woodland period of North American pre-Columbian cultures spanned a period from roughly 1000 BCE to European contact in the eastern part of North America, with some archaeolog ...

Indians for a thousand years prior to the arrival of whites, the

Lewis and Clark Expedition The Lewis and Clark Expedition, also known as the Corps of Discovery Expedition, was the United States expedition to cross the newly acquired western portion of the country after the Louisiana Purchase. The Corps of Discovery was a select gr ...

camped near or at the location of the forest on July 27, 1804. Joshua Pilcher founded a

trading post A trading post, trading station, or trading house, also known as a factory, is an establishment or settlement where goods and services could be traded. Typically the location of the trading post would allow people from one geographic area to tr ...

near Fontenelle Forest's great marsh for the Missouri Fur Company in 1812. This was at the edge of territory of the Omaha and

Otoe The Otoe (Chiwere: Jiwére) are a Native American people of the Midwestern United States. The Otoe language, Chiwere, is part of the Siouan family and closely related to that of the related Iowa, Missouria, and Ho-Chunk tribes. Historically, t ...

peoples. The French-American trader Lucien Fontenelle, from

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans

, later bought the post from Pilcher, and it became known as Fontenelle's Post. With the declining fur trade, he sold the post to the federal government in 1832, which used it to house the Bellevue Indian Agency. After Fontenelle's death in 1840, his oldest son Logan Fontenelle returned to Nebraska from school in

St. Louis St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...

. Tri-lingual and of mixed race, the younger Fontenelle started working at age 15 as an interpreter for the US Indian agent at the Agency. His mother was the daughter of the Omaha principal chief, Big Elk; and he spoke Omaha, English and French. The younger Fontenelle participated as interpreter in negotiations for the Omaha cession of land in its 1854 treaty with the United States, and many European Americans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries thought he was a chief. In 1919 the historian Melvin R. Gilmore wrote an article explaining the Omaha

patrilineal Patrilineality, also known as the male line, the spear side or agnatic kinship, is a common kinship system in which an individual's family membership derives from and is recorded through their father's lineage. It generally involves the inheritan ...

gente system, which he believed prohibited Fontenelle as a chief because of his American father, as he was never adopted into the tribe. Because Fontenelle's father was a white man, the Omaha classified him as also white. Melvin Randolph Gilmore, "The True Logan Fontenelle"
''Publications of the Nebraska State Historical Society,'' Vol. 19, edited by Albert Watkins, Nebraska State Historical Society, 1919, pp. 64-65, at GenNet, accessed 25 August 2011 Both father and son are buried in the forest, although the exact location is unknown. Dr. A.A. Tyler and Dr. Harold Gifford, Sr. founded the Fontenelle Forest Association in 1913 with a mission to preserve the woodlands south of

Omaha, Nebraska Omaha ( ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Nebraska and the county seat of Douglas County. Omaha is in the Midwestern United States on the Missouri River, about north of the mouth of the Platte River. The nation's 39th-largest cit ...

along the Missouri River. They bought their first preservation land in 1920. The association named the forest after Logan Fontenelle. A small nature center was opened in 1966 for the popular educational hikes led by volunteers. In 2000, the Fontenelle Forest Association officially changed its name to Fontenelle Nature Association. In 2012, Fontenelle Nature Association changed its name back to Fontenelle Forest. Today, Fontenelle Forest keeps more than 2,000 acres of riparian forest, prairies, swamps, and other lands in preservation. The lands encompass one of the largest natural

deciduous In the fields of horticulture and Botany, the term ''deciduous'' () means "falling off at maturity" and "tending to fall off", in reference to trees and shrubs that seasonally shed leaves, usually in the autumn; to the shedding of petals, ...

forests in Nebraska.

Facilities

Fontenelle Forest includes several facilities. The Katherine and Fred Buffett Forest Learning Center is the main building in the forest. Built in 2000, it has space for school programs, public education events and private events. Two miles from the Learning Center is the Gilbert and Martha Hitchcock Wetlands Learning Center. It offers educational spaces adjacent to the Gifford Memorial Boardwalk, a 3/8-mile path that leads to a two-story observation tower overlooking the Great Marsh, and was opened in 1999. Fontenelle Forest also owns and operates Neale Woods, located north of Omaha.

Wildlife

Situated along the

Missouri River Valley The Missouri River Valley outlines the journey of the Missouri River from its headwaters where the Madison, Jefferson and Gallatin Rivers flow together in Montana to its confluence with the Mississippi River in the State of Missouri. At long th ...

flyway, Fontenelle Forest, the

Audubon Society The National Audubon Society (Audubon; ) is an American non-profit environmental organization dedicated to conservation of birds and their habitats. Located in the United States and incorporated in 1905, Audubon is one of the oldest of such orga ...

reports that "246 species f birdshave been recorded, among them 35 species of warblers." '' Birder’s World'' named the forest one of the top ten warbler viewing spots in the United States. ''Bird Watching'' magazine wrote that Fontenelle Forest is, "the single best place to see eastern birds near the western edge of their ranges and western birds near their eastern borders.""Fontenelle Forest"
''Bird Watching''. Retrieved 8/8/11. It is the only place in Nebraska where

red-shouldered hawk The red-shouldered hawk (''Buteo lineatus'') is a medium-sized buteo. Its breeding range spans eastern North America and along the coast of California and northern to northeastern-central Mexico. It is a permanent resident throughout most of its ...

s have nested, and one of the few known places in the state that support

pileated woodpecker The pileated woodpecker (''Dryocopus pileatus'') is a large, mostly black woodpecker native to North America. An insectivore, it inhabits deciduous forests in eastern North America, the Great Lakes, the boreal forests of Canada, and parts of the ...

s. Other species of note seen in the forest include

Kentucky Kentucky ( , ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States and one of the states of the Upper South. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north; West Virginia and Virginia ...

prothonotary The word prothonotary is recorded in English since 1447, as "principal clerk of a court," from L.L. ''prothonotarius'' ( c. 400), from Greek ''protonotarios'' "first scribe," originally the chief of the college of recorders of the court of the B ...

, and

cerulean warbler The cerulean warbler (''Setophaga cerulea'') is a small songbird in the family Parulidae. It is a long-distance migrant, breeding in eastern North American hardwood forests. In the non-breeding season, it winters on the eastern slope of the And ...

; wood thrush; grasshopper sparrow; and

whip-poor-will The eastern whip-poor-will (''Antrostomus vociferus'') is a medium-sized (22–27 cm; 8.7-10.6 ins.) bird within the nightjar family, Caprimulgidae, from North America. The whip-poor-will is commonly heard within its range, but less o ...

Fontenelle Forest bibliography

* Garabrandt, G.W. (1978) ''A history of land use in the oak-hickory woodland of Fontenelle Forest.'' University of Nebraska at Omaha.

References

External links