TOLEDO, Ohio — Metroparks Toledo’s governing board voted Wednesday morning to approve a grant application that would help the Black Swamp Conservancy purchase Mouse Island, a small Lake Erie island once owned by President Rutherford B. Hayes.
The 7-acre island sits about 1,500 feet off the coast of the Catawba Island peninsula in Lake Erie’s western basin, on the Miller Ferry route to Put-in-Bay and Middle Bass Island. The privately owned island — listed for sale at $5 million — has rarely been open to the public.
The island was the vacation home of former President Rutherford B. Hayes. An Ohio native and former governor of the Buckeye State, Hayes bought the island in 1873 with his law partner Ralph Buckland and local doctor L.Q. Rawson; by around 1900, Hayes had acquired the rest of the island from the co-owners, and his extended family used it for summer vacations. Julie Mayle, director of manuscripts at the Hayes Presidential Library & Museums, said the Hayes family loved the outdoors — wife Lucy Hayes “loved being outside, loved flora and fauna” and “really loved to go fishing.”
The grant application approved Wednesday morning is the first public step toward bringing the island under conservation ownership. The Black Swamp Conservancy, which celebrates 33 years this year, protects more than 22,000 acres of natural habitat in northwest Ohio and has completed fourteen wetland restoration projects in the Western Lake Erie Basin under the H2Ohio program. Officials have not disclosed a timeline or the final purchase price.
