Outside Oxford: Riverwatching at Sawyer Point

Eat your heart out, Eden Park. Sawyer Point is indubitably the most beautiful place to connect with nature while in Cincinnati.

Just an hour out from Oxford, the park is the perfect place for a weekend day-trip. It was created in 1988 to celebrate the city’s bicentennial and conserve the riverfront. Since then, it’s been the site for the traveling Tall Stacks steamboat celebration, the Labor Day fireworks show and the Bunbury music festival.

You can take your time walking the trail right along the Ohio River, and watch riverboats pass under the Daniel Carter Beard bridge.

You can glance at the geologic time markers below your feet, where each block encompasses one million years. Or check out the art — like most Cincinnati landmarks, Sawyer Point is home to a few flying pig statues. Unlike the rest of the city, it also boasts a giant bronze statue of Cincinnatus.

If you geek out over Ohio history, you can admire the National Steamboat Monument, a replica of the giant paddlewheel from the famous riverboat American Queen. Recordings of old music and voices describing the river in another time play as you walk around it.

The best part of the park, however, is the Serpentine Wall, a curvy flood wall meant to temporarily restrain the river should it overflow its banks. When the river isn’t flooded, it’s the perfect place to sit and admire the view of Northern Kentucky and enjoy escaping Oxford for the afternoon.

@ee_glynn

glynnee@miamioh.edu