Lost Ohio: More Travels Into Haunted Landscapes, Ghost Towns, and Forgotten Lives

by Randy McNutt

  Compromise

  Compromise, a ghost town in Champaign County in central Ohio, received its name literally—through a political compromise. The prairie town, on the Middle Fork of the Vermillion River, was founded by Isaac Moore in a little place of brush and timber called Buck Grove in 1830. He and his neighbors had been squatters there for several years, so they decided to make their residency official and start a town. Parts of two other small towns, Kerr and Rantoul, were absorbed into Compromise. The southwest part of the town was composed of mainly German immigrants. The local post office was called Flatville, reflecting the topography.

  Crosswick

  Crosswick is known as the home of the Crosswick Monster. In the mid-1800s, developers John and James Jennings created a paper town with twenty lots, at a location about a mile north of Waynesville in northern Warren County. They named the proposed community in honor of their hometown in New Jersey. Crosswick never was laid out, although some people had lived in the area as early as 1821. The most significant event to occur there came in 1885, when two local brothers, Ed and Joe Lynch, eleven and thirteen years old, were fishing in a local creek. They saw a large, scaly creature, thirty to forty feet long and about sixteen inches wide, emerging from a hollow sycamore tree. The monster had fangs and a forked tongue protruding from a big red mouth. The thing grabbed Ed with arms that came out of the bottom of its body. According to a story in the Miami Gazette, the monster stood erect and ran with the velocity of a racehorse. A minister, Jacob Horn, and two other men who had been working nearby pursued the thing as it attempted to drag the boy into the hollow place beneath the tree. “They scared the monster momentarily, and the boy got away,” said Dennis Dalton, a Warren County historian. “Sixty men went back to hunt it and they chased it into a cave on Mill Run Creek. They dynamited the cave shut. When they went back later to unseal the cave and find the remains, it was empty. I talked to an old woman whose father, a local Quaker, saw the thing slither up an embankment and cross a railroad track on the day the boy was taken. His word is as good as anything to me. The boy was so frightened that he was scarred for life. He remained extremely quiet, and later moved to Indiana to get away from all the questioning.”

  Dogtown

  In Licking County’s Newark Township, Dogtown once existed on the north fork of the Licking River. The town never was much of a place. It burned dimly in the first part of the nineteenth century, then faded. The city of Newark now sits on top of old Dogtown. But it is not completely forgotten. According to local historians, the town took its name from a strange legend. The area where the town sat was long ago the home of creatures that were half human and half canine. They could talk and bark. For some reason, Ohioans of the 1800s had a fascination with naming their towns for dogs. In my travels I came across at least three other places called Dogtown, including one in Perry County. But only the Licking County community has the legend of the “weredog.”

  Eclipse

  In 1901, a man named Jackson founded the Eclipse Mine in a rural area along State Route 33, near the Plains in Athens County. A company town grew and borrowed its name from the mine, whose nickname was Dog Town. At its peak in the 1920s, four hundred employees worked at the company mine and about twelve hundred people lived in the town. When the mine closed in the early 1940s, a local man named E. A. Cottingham bought the property. Company houses were basic wood-frame buildings—shotgun houses, each with four rooms in line with each other, including a kitchen and two bedrooms. Today, some of the old mine-related buildings still stand. So do thirteen miners’ houses now owned by Eclipse Ltd., a business of five area people who operate the ghost town as a tourist colony called Eclipse Company Town. They rent out some of the houses as cabins for hikers on the Hocking-Adena Bike Trail. Other houses are occupied by artists, the Starvin’ Wolf and Yellow Moon cafes, a holistic health center, the Buckeye Forest Council, the Eclipse Company Store, and a physician’s office. Eclipse is three miles north of Athens.

  Erastus

  Erastus, a ghost town in Mercer County, is named after the owner of a general store. About 1890 the town was called Murphysboro, after the owner of a sawmill. The town also had a Methodist church, two tile mills, two general stores, a blacksmith shop, and other businesses. The farm town was dry, very dry, at least until a new resident opened a saloon. Farmers’ wives strenuously objected; one day their disgust bubbled over and they grabbed axes and came into the saloon looking for trouble. The men ran. Frightened by the women’s fervor, the owner left town and never returned. The saloon closed, and Murphysboro remained dry. A few years later, when the town asked the postal service to open a branch in town, the government told the people to select another name. Murphysboro was already being used by another town’s post office. When the townspeople failed to decide the matter, the postal service chose a name for them—Erastus, after Erastus Walker, the general store owner who had filed the original application.

  Fallsville

  Fallsville was named for a falls in the area, and obviously not for John Timberlake, who founded the community in 1848. The town lies about six miles north of Hillsboro, the Highland County seat. Fallsville had three streets, Main, Mill, and Cross; eight houses; a Methodist church; and several businesses. Residents predicted big things for their community. They also spoke of buried treasure left by the Indians and witches who might roam the rural area outside of town. But no treasure was ever discovered, and Fallsville died of natural causes before the turn of the twentieth century.

  Fort Rowdy

  Fort Rowdy was built in 1793 by General Anthony Wayne’s troops as they headed north into Indian country. With them they took some camp followers, including wives, peddlers, and wagon operators. On the east bank of Stillwater River in what is now Miami County, the troops erected an earthworks and log fortification on limestone bluffs overlooking the river. “After the fortification was completed, it was christened Fort Rowdy,” historian R. L. Harmon wrote. “Local legend states that the ceremony concluded with the baptism of whiskey poured on the breastworks from the soldiers’ canteens and a lively celebration followed. It is said the name Rowdy was derived from the behavior of the troops and camp followers; another less colorful explanation is that the site was named after an officer friend of General Wayne’s named Rowdy.” When the town was founded, leading citizens considered giving it the name Rowdy, but they decided that rowdy wasn’t the proper image. Today, the town of Covington lies near the site of Fort Rowdy. The Fort Rowdy Gathering is held every fall at Covington Community Park on West U.S. Route 36.

  Franklinton

  On the sunny afternoon when I arrived in Franklinton in urban Columbus, I was surprised to see a black metal sign identifying the community as a historic place. Attractive blue banners hung from light poles, welcoming visitors to Franklinton. Of the nineteen larger Ohio towns of the Northwest Territory, including Cincinnati and Marietta, only Franklinton is a ghost town today. In 1797, Lucas Sullivant laid it out in Franklin Township in Franklin County, near Columbus. He established Gift Street, on which he offered lots to settlers for free if they would come there to live. People predicted great things for Franklinton. Pioneers traveling west stopped here on their long journey, and others stayed and took up farming and laboring. John Huffman set up a distillery on four acres in the area in 1801; he paid one gallon of whiskey for each acre. When Ohio became a state in 1803, Joseph Foos, who would become a general during the War of 1812, opened a brick hotel. Franklinton also had a jail and post office. As Columbus continued to expand, it engulfed Franklinton, which became a victim of early urban sprawl. After its post office closed in late 1834, the town lost its remaining identity.

  Funk Bottoms

  Funk Bottoms (not Funky Bottoms) is a ghost of pioneer Ohio: old-growth forest scattered across 206 acres. Visitors can see it from a 1.5-mile boardwalk trail; it is as though a slice of the old Ohio were singled out and saved as an outdoor museum piece. The entire Funk Bottoms wildlife area consists of 1,422 acres behind th
e Mohicanville flood-control dam in Wayne and Ashland counties. The ecosystem includes five-hundred-year-old trees, buttonbush swamps, and a variety of bird species. The place also shelters bald eagles, deer, many kinds of fish, pheasants, migratory birds, and, since 1985 the endangered (in Ohio) sandhill cranes. Ohio never was a good area for sandhills: At least two small flocks lived near Toledo and disappeared in the 1880s. Another flock near Huron disappeared in 1926. At the bottoms, the birds finally reproduced in 1987. The state began purchasing the bottoms to open a wildlife sanctuary in 1991. In 2000, state senator Bill Harris, an Ashland Republican, announced the budgeting of $72,000 to allow the state to purchase another twenty acres of bottoms that will help protect the wetland and wildlife habitat from development.

  Grenadier Squaw Town

  Grenadier Squaw Town, an old Shawnee community on Scippo Creek, was located between the Pickaway Plains and a heavily wooded area in what is now Pickaway County. The village was named for Nonhelema, a sister of Chief Cornstalk who stood six and a half feet tall. She was strong and intelligent. White people remarked that she carried herself like a grenadier, and the name stuck. After much bloodshed, she helped bring peace to the area in the 1700s. An Ohio historical marker at 4174 Emerson Road, near Circleville, commemorates her village. Her community included a council house and a gauntlet through which white prisoners were condemned to run. On a hill near the town, called the Burning Ground or the Burning Stake, prisoners were burned at the stake. Villagers had full view of its gruesome spectacles. Other small Indian towns in the area could also see the Burning Ground. Across from the creek, Black Mountain was a ridge that rose about 150 feet above the prairie. From this place the Indians could watch their enemies approaching. Another dubious distinction of Grenadier Squaw Town: A man named Slover, who was taken prisoner at Crawford’s Defeat in 1782, escaped from his captors. The Indians had stripped him naked and tortured him, but they stopped when the skies suddenly erupted in thunder and lightning. Tribal leaders thought the Great Spirit was trying to send them a message, so they tied up Slover and locked him in a house. They decided to kill him the next day. All night he worked at untying his bonds. A guard taunted him: “How would you like to eat fire?” Later that night, after the Indian guards had fallen asleep, Slover freed himself, stole a horse, and rode off. When the horse gave out, Slover walked through nettles, brush, briars, and thorns. Mosquitoes bit him hundreds of times. When he arrived home, “he had more the appearance of a mass of raw flesh than an animated human being,” historian Henry Howe wrote in 1888.

  The Harrison Tunnel

  The Harrison Tunnel, on South Miami Avenue in Cleves, was filled with silt when I visited, but I did find an Ohio historical marker that explained the tunnel’s history. Made of sandstone and brick, the tunnel is a part of the defunct Cincinnati and Whitewater Canal, which opened in the early 1840s to connect the markets of southern Indiana with downtown Cincinnati. City merchants lobbied for the twenty-five mile extension of the Whitewater, which ended in Lawrenceburg, Indiana. They feared that their business would suffer without a connection to the canal. During construction, the project engineer saved money by building a canal tunnel instead of a series of locks. The tunnel ran 1,782 feet from Cleves to North Bend and was 24 feet wide at the waterline. The center arch was 20 feet from the canal bottom. “The tunnel was unusual,” said Bob Mueller of the Ohio Canal Society. “Only two canals in Ohio that I know of, both in the northeast, have tunnels anything like this. The Cincinnati and Whitewater Canal didn’t last too long—it closed in the 1860s—but it had a lot of business in its heyday in the 1840s and early 1850s.” The tunnel is also called the Harrison Tunnel because President William Henry Harrison of North Bend believed in the canal and bought stock in it. He sold a part of his farm for the right-of-way and provided clay to manufacture an estimated two million bricks that were used in construction. On March 31, 1838, the steamer Moselle brought passengers from Cincinnati for the ground-breaking ceremony. In 2003 the village of Cleves planned to build a thirteen-acre park around the tunnel.

  Hartford

  Hartford, on the Auglaize River and the old Defiance Trail, was platted in 1828 on about seventy-two acres in Allen County. It had a tannery, miller, trading post, school, boat yard, and tavern. When word of the Miami and Erie Canal made the rounds of the area, Hartford momentarily boomed. Four doctors moved to town. The population tripled. One hundred and fifty new lots were sold. Founders didn’t hide their hopes that the town could be a stop on the canal. To demonstrate their faith, they renamed the community New Hartford and hoped for some good luck. Unfortunately, when the construction dust settled, the canal missed Hartford by two miles. The distance might as well have been two hundred miles, for it was enough to cause the town to fail. Still seeking to change their luck, residents renamed their town Gallatin in 1839, to avoid confusion with another Hartford in Ohio. In 1840, Gallatin had fifty-nine adult residents, but by 1866, most of them had died or moved. Today, all that remains is the Hartford Christian Church, a cemetery, and unfulfilled dreams of wealth and success.

  Hemlock

  Hemlock is one of my favorite town names. It is in eastern Saltlick Township in Perry County, and it once included a post office, a general store, woolen mill, and a number of houses. When the coal boom declined in the early 1900s, Hemlock started its slow fall. No word on how it was named. I stopped there in 2003 and found a number of closed businesses, a few homes still hanging on, and a small, messy town park. A historic Church of Christ sits on a hill overlooking the town. Hemlock is a ghost town in the making.

  Hobson’s Choice

  From May 9 to October 7, 1793, General Anthony Wayne drilled his troops, prepared for war, and accumulated supplies at a place called Hobson’s Choice. The military camp received its name from a seventeenth-century English liveryman who refused to give customers their horse of choice and instead always gave them the horse nearest to the stable door. The site is near Fourth and Mound Streets in Cincinnati. What is today a ghost camp became a small community, in that soldiers and their families lived there for months. (The soldiers couldn’t train near Fort Washington because of flooding.) After the men marched north, toward eventual victory at the Battle of Fallen Timbers on August 20, 1794, Hobson’s Choice was abandoned, its land absorbed into the city.

  Jacksonville

  They should have named this town Old Hickoryville, but Jacksonville sufficed. Named after Andrew Jackson, Jacksonville was on the Chillicothe Turnpike on Brush Creek Hill in Adams County. Seaman historian Stephen Kelley said the town received its name because Jackson used to take the road from Tennessee to Washington, D.C., in the years before he became president. His visits made him a popular figure in Adams County. In 1815, William Thomas laid out the town and named it. Jacksonville established a post office, with James Dunbar as postmaster. Jacksonville’s fortunes soon declined, and by 1827 the post office was closed. Later, it reopened as the Dunbarton Post Office, but by then fate had already dealt Jacksonville a mortal blow: the railroad selected the new town of Peebles as a stop, leaving Jacksonville in the dust of history.

  Miami

  Shortly after the pioneer land speculator John Cleves Symmes landed at what would become North Bend on the Ohio River in 1789, he began having bigger dreams for his part of rugged Hamilton County. He predicted that little North Bend would become “the Eygpt of the Miami,” referring to the Great Miami River, which flowed into the larger river nearby. To realize his dream, he planned another town, which he called Miami, to link with North Bend on a one-and-a-half-mile strip that led to the Great Miami. But hilly land prevented the founders from fully developing their town. In a few years, all talk of it had died, and Symmes was worried about his personal finances. Miami became a ghost town. Symmes died broke.

  Middlebury

  Middlebury, a ghost town in Van Wert County’s Harrison Township, started as Daisie on November 10, 1850. What’s left of it is at the intersection of Willshire–Harrison Center Road and V
an Wert–Decatur Road. The town peaked at the turn of the twentieth century, before rural free delivery made Middlebury’s—and many other small towns’ post offices—obsolete. In 1899, Middlebury was a booming agricultural town with its own doctors, barbers, Grange hall, saloons, growing stores, blacksmiths, and twenty-one houses. But the times conspired against Middlebury and its kind. Prohibition closed the saloon in 1919. As people moved out of town, other businesses closed through the 1940s. Middlebury became just another example of America’s fading rural heritage.

  Newport

  This is the other Newport—not Sin City, Kentucky. James Kirkpatrick laid it out in 1819 at the west fork of the Ohio Brush Creek in Adams County. In 1869, a post office named Wilson (honoring Congressman John T. Wilson) opened in Newport. Presumably some people thought that the town might change its name to Wilson; after all, he had been a prominent conductor on the Underground Railroad and a captain in the Union infantry during the Civil War. Later, he opened a children’s home in his county. But Newport’s name was never changed officially. The railroad arrived and, for a brief time, gave hope for a future. Prosperity didn’t last, however, and today Newport is a ghost town.