Chestnut Ridge is situated on a narrow outcropping of Blackhand sandstone, deposited more than 300 million years ago when Ohio's ancient ocean draned from the land. The high hills that make up the ridge span about 4,500 feet and rise to 1,116 feet at the highest point. Long ago the vast majestic stands of American chestnut trees that once covered the slopes of the ridge. The chestnut blight arrived with a vengeance on the east coast in the early 1900s. It spread westward moving up to 50 miles a year, killing every chestnut tree along the way. By the 1950s most of the trees that grew in the area were gone and today only a few blight resistant hybrid chestnut trees can be seen along the Homesite Trail.

Considered the first ridge in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, visitors can easily see the Columbus skyline some 19 miles away from an observation deck atop the Ridge Trail. Black oak, shagbark hickory and northern red oak trees growing along the upper slopes and ridge enhace the woodland beauty of the 486-acre Metro Park. Sugar maples and American beeck trees are plentiful along the lower slopes, Perhaps the finest specimens of American holly found in Central Ohio can be found growing in the homesite garden.