by Randy McNutt
New Rome
New Rome is Ohio’s most hated ghost town. The former village, seven miles west of Columbus, was for years a notorious speed trap. The Columbus Dispatch called it “the per-capita corruption capital of Ohio.” Car and Driver called New Rome “a little police state.” Attorney General Jim Petro said, “New Rome made government look bad.” As the community was overcome by urban sprawl, 46 percent of its population left in ten years. By 2000, only sixty people remained and the town consisted of about ten homes, three small apartment buildings, and several businesses. But officers continued to write tickets as though the community were a large city. Tickets generated more than $300,000 annually, and the town’s sole traffic signal was used to help catch unsuspecting motorists. By then, New Rome had shriveled to a size of only three blocks long and three wide, including the infamous thousand-foot stretch of West Broad Street—the old U.S. 40. Before motorists realized it, the speed limit decreased from 45 mph to 35 mph, and they were busted. The price for driving 42 mph in a 35-mph zone on West Broad was ninety dollars. Naturally, the tickets infuriated commuters who didn’t even realize that New Rome existed.
The town didn’t have much of a history until its later years. It was founded as Rome in the late 1830s near Alton, another town on the National Road. Alton attracted most of the new people and businesses. The History of Franklin and Pickaway Counties said of Rome in the late 1800s: “Its classic name did not draw any considerable number to dwell therein, and whatever glory may have gathered about this point has assuredly departed from it.” In 1941, officials changed the name to New Rome and incorporated the community. In 1947, New Rome officials discovered that big money could be made in the ticket business. By 1975, New Rome was known as Ohio’s worst speed trap. In 1997, state inspectors condemned the town hall, forcing town officials to move into a trailer. But the police continued to write tickets. Driver Jim Bussey became so upset that he created his own Web site, www.newromesucks.com, to publish unflattering photographs and stories about the village. In November 2001, Jamie Mueller quietly ran for mayor and staged a New Roman coup d’état, winning all six votes that were cast. He tried to eliminate the police department for two years, and then Attorney General Jim Petro filed suit to dissolve the town. In November 2003, a new state law, aimed specifically at New Rome, allowed the state to request dissolution if towns of fewer than 150 residents declare a fiscal emergency for three straight years. When I drove through New Rome on a summer day in 2004, I made sure I didn’t exceed the speed limit. By then, though, New Rome police had already stopped writing tickets. The town was finally dissolved on September 8, 2004, when New Rome became a part of Prairie Township. Bussey celebrated that day by writing on his Web site: “New Rome, Traffic Trap, 1947–2004: Rotten for Years, Buried at Last.”
Peach Grove
Peach Grove, the epitome of rural life in the early 1900s, was a community on Springdale Road near Blue Rock Road in Hamilton County’s Colerain Township. This was before development invaded the area and made Colerain the state’s largest township—in size and population. The name Peach Grove lingered into the early 1900s, but today few people know of it, and the area is the antithesis of peach groves—a place filled with shopping strips and subdivisions. The name came from the community’s peach orchards, planted by German immigrants in the mid-1800s. When I interviewed an apple farmer in Dearborn County, Indiana, he quickly identified his hometown—Peach Grove. He claimed he was forced to move across the state line to find land suitable for his apple and peach orchards and said the people from Peach Grove had something in their blood that enabled them to successfully grow fruit. Today, all they grow there are traffic jams and soccer matches.
Pine Hill
Pine Hill was a wooded area where some pioneers lived in Saltcreek Township, Wayne County, in 1811. William Searight, an Irish immigrant, lived there in a cabin with his wife, the former Jane Johnson, and their two children. Friends described him as a “monarch of all he surveyed.” After the War of 1812 ended, killings resumed in the wilderness, the work of some Indians and pro-British forces. For protection, Searight moved his family into a blockhouse in neighboring Holmes County’s Prairie Township. They remained there until the fighting subsided. According to Wayne County history, an elderly Indian chief was visited the blockhouse one day and told Mrs. Searight that he had “cut out the tongues of ninety-nine women, and wanted hers to make the even 100.” She was not impressed.
Pickleville
In the early 1800s, settlers in Hamilton County founded O’Banionville. James Loveland owned the general store. The town also had two blacksmith shops, an inn, a post office and a wool-carding factory. By 1830, a subdivision was planned, but promoter Colonel William Ramsey heard about a rail line coming through, and changed his mind about houses. He envisioned bigger things for the town. Unfortunately, the arrival of the Marietta (Baltimore and Ohio) Railroad had the opposite effect on O’Banionville. It became a mere flag stop, while Loveland, the subdivision, outgrew its parent town. When the post office was moved to the growing Loveland, O’Banionville started to die. Perhaps to attract better luck, residents started calling it Pickleville, in honor of A. C. Pickleheimer, who operated a local stone quarry and shipping company. By this time, however, fate could not be stopped. Pickleville died by 1920. Today, O’Bannionville is indistinguishable from Loveland. Only a few homes remain.
Post Boy
This tiny community near Newcomerstown was tagged Post Boy after a boy was killed there in the 1820s. For years a wooden sign marked the place, which is gone now but not forgotten. “I remember my father-in-law telling about the spot called Post Boy,” said Winona Wherley of Stone Creek. “It seems they were about to hang the wrong man [for the murder] when a spectator saw John Funston in the crowd—and they got him.” Funston was hanged at the corner of West High and 6th Street in New Philadelphia on December 30, 1825. For a century, Post Boy retained its macabre name, until it, too, was dead.
Providence
Providence was an ironically named town in Lucas County. (Providence was not kind to Providence.) In the 1840s, when traffic boomed on the Miami and Erie Canal and the Maumee River, Providence had five hotels to accommodate all the travelers. People from Michigan came there to relax. The boom continued when the railroads came and when oil was discovered in the area. In the early 1900s, however, life in Providence slipped into slow motion. When the automobile arrived and the road system improved, travelers no longer needed to go through Providence. My friend Joseph Donnermeyer, a professor of rural sociology at Ohio State University and a fellow back-roads traveler, believes these are the best and the worst of times for modern small towns, depending on their individual situations. Providence is a good example. “Towns tied to urban economies are doing well,” he told me. “Those towns that aren’t around the urban areas are usually doing poorly. They have no economic base. Towns near growing suburban areas have a chance but the ones farther away have a difficult time. Rural towns in Ohio aren’t ever going to be what they used to be. Some are hurting. Kids don’t come back. The economy is stagnant. Many towns don’t survive.”
Richardville Indian Reservation
In the early 1800s, Miami chief Jean Baptiste Richardville, his four wives (Golden Leaf, Little Fan, Little Tree, and Martha), and their family lived on 1,380 acres between Wren and Willshire and the St. Mary’s River. The tract ran along the present State Route 49 and extended into Indiana. Richardville, whose Indian name was Pechewa, led the Miami tribe from 1815 until his death in 1841. Supposedly he was a nephew of Little Turtle, the Miami chief who fought General Anthony Wayne in the 1790s. Richardville signed the Treaty of St. Mary’s in 1818 and received from the federal government about 12,800 acres for the tribe. His personal land was near Wren; it included a new brick house. The larger tract was divided into sections for Richardville’s family and other prominent Indians. About a hundred tribe members lived on the reservation in Van Wert County; it was a good place for hunting. He lived th
ere until his death at age eighty-one, when he was buried in Fort Wayne. Through the years, his descendants lived on the reservation, which eventually was split up and sold and became farm country. A bronze plaque on a large stone marks the site of the reservation, near Route 49.
Rossville
Rossville, named for Senator James Ross of Pennsylvania (1762–1847), developed on the west side of the Great Miami River, across from Hamilton in Butler County. Founders John Sutherland, Henry Brown, Jacob Burnet, James Smith, and William Ruffin planned Rossville as a port from which goods could be shipped down the river to the Ohio, and on to the Mississippi. The community grew steadily, connected to Hamilton by ferries. On September 3, 1841, the town council adopted Rossville’s seal, a circular one featuring the image of an eagle. By 1850, Rossville had 1,447 residents. In 1854, voters united both communities into a single town, Hamilton, and Rossville became its western neighborhood—and thus a ghost town. In 1866, a double-lane covered bridge was built to connect the two places. In those days, Rossville’s Baptist church gained a reputation for being haunted. According to Butler County historian Jim Blount, “There persisted a story that the place of worship was haunted by the ghost of a headless woman. As late as the 1880s, some people claimed to have seen her frightening form in the church.” The church was torn down in the early 1900s. A Rossville branch of the Hamilton Post Office opened in 1879, in a store at the corner of Main and B Streets. For years, the west side movie theater was called the Rossville. A few other reminders of the old name are evident, but these days, most reminders of Rossville are gone. The Rossville Historic District consists of nineteenth-century homes and commercial buildings.
Salem Heights
No witches lived in Salem Heights—at least none who ever admitted to practicing the old black magic. Instead, the lives of its people centered around a Methodist church that was organized in 1805. When I arrived in this ghost town at the intersection of Salem and Sutton Roads in Hamilton County’s Anderson Township, I didn’t even realize it once existed. Then I read the historical marker that stands in front of the church: “Families of Salem settlement first held services in Francis McCormick’s log house. A log church was built here in 1810 on land McCormick gave for religious and educational purposes. A new brick church was constructed in 1825. In 1863, the existing church was built, the bricks from the second church being used for the education building next door.”
Today, the settlement is built over by 1940s and 1950s brick and wood ranch homes and Cape Cods. About a dozen newer homes stand behind the church—the Ashton Grove subdivision. The church is striking in its simplicity: wood frame, painted gray, with white trim, but the interior is as new as the latest fad. I peeked inside and saw the sanctuary filled with small round tables; it looked like a restaurant. The altar area contained a set of drums, a piano, and other musical instruments. Clearly, this was a modern United Methodist church, despite the building’s age. “It’s such a contrast to what you seen on the outside, but the style is really in character with the history of the church,” the Reverend John Larsen told me. “We have a contemporary congregation. We have a big screen, all high-tech. We have a live, big band. Pretty upbeat. Things get moving nicely. Our small, nightclub tables were not put here by design. We had a nonalcoholic Margaritaville night, and we brought the tables in for only that weekend. The moving men decided not to remove them until Monday, so when the congregation showed up for services on Sunday, they had to sit at the tables. That caused quite a stir. Because of the casual nature of the church, the people actually loved the tables—they wouldn’t let them be removed. The style is in keeping with the church’s founder, who wanted a modern church in those early days.”
Judging by the cemetery next door, I wouldn’t have guessed that anything modern ever happened here. The old headstones are weathered and oddly shaped. I walked through on a cold February day; my cheap pen froze in the freezing wind. Names on the stones include Hannah Miller, who died in 1837 at age twenty-one; Ralph Thompson, a Kentucky native who died at age fifty in 1844; and Benjamin Thompson, who came from Pennsylvania and died at age twenty-eight in 1819. On the white, wooden front door are two brass plaques, identifying the place as site No. 267 on the National Register of Historic Places. These days, the church is about all that’s left of Salem. Over the years the town died, and a neighborhood rose on top of it. I don’t think many people even noticed its passing. Now, it is just another forgotten place in a suburban township and a reminder of genealogical roots and religious convictions.
Saltair
With a name like this, you’d think the town would be near the ocean. But it’s at State Routes 222 and 232 in Clermont County’s Tate Township. Saltair never had anything to do with salt or air: It was named for the founding family, the Salts, whose name originally came from a big estate in England, named Salt Aire. According to county historians, Edward Salt came to the remote area that is now Clermont County in 1796. After fighting for the colonies in the Revolutionary War, he decided to come to the western frontier. A little community took his last name. Today, it is a ghost town, although some homes are scattered around the area.
Shasta
The name of this Van Wert County town sounds more like a 1970s soft drink than a community. Actually, it was named after another town that was named after the Shasta plant. In the 1880s, our Shasta was a town with limited promise in Liberty Township. For a town of fewer than a hundred people when it started, Shasta was well equipped with an express office, rail depot, and a post office. The town was also referred to as Shasta Station, because the trains ran through it. John A. Smith had the vision for Shasta, which he named for a town and county in California. Nobody knows much about Smith. Did he live in California earlier? (Interestingly, Shasta County, California, is today the home of a number of ghost towns, including Cottonwood, French Town, and, my favorite, Bulgin’ Gulch.) Smith lived adjacent to his new town and oversaw the development of a sawmill, a post office (it used the Shasta name), and several houses. But when the hardy pioneers of the county cut down the trees and turned the area into farmland, there wasn’t a need for a sawmill. Shasta faded into the barely visible place that it is today.
Snaketown
This Shawnee ghost town existed from about 1789 to 1794, when General Anthony Wayne’s troops defeated an Indian coalition at the Battle of Fallen Timbers. The Indians abandoned Snaketown when Wayne marched toward their village. The place was named for a chief named Captain Snake, a moniker that conjures up all sorts of negative images of torture and death. Yet little is known about the man. His town later became another town named Florida, in Henry County’s Flatrock Township. It is now a ghost town too. A marker stands on the site, recognizing both towns.
Squawtown
Squawtown, a ghost town in Licking County’s Washington Township, took its name from a horrifying incident. By the early 1800s, the Indians had moved farther north and west when the pioneers settled in the area. As historian N. N. Hill explained in 1881: “The general feeling between the whites and Indians at that time was one of peace, with an occasional exception among the pioneers of some who had suffered in the earlier Indian wars from their peculiar mode of warfare. There were a few whose deadly hatred could only leave them with their breath [in death].” The Squawtown tragedy is an example. The community, two miles east of Utica, was the scene of a tragic shooting. Three white men played cards to decide which one would shoot a certain Indian woman. Nobody knew why the men wanted to kill her. A Mr. McLean was later convicted of the shooting and received only two years in prison. Some people of the time claimed he was pardoned a short time before his sentence had been served and that he died soon after his pardon. Another account is that when he left prison, a prison official asked him to reveal the name of the man who pulled the trigger. McLean replied, “I am innocent, but I have suffered; one is enough to suffer, and I decline to tell.” Soon the town in which the shooting occurred became known as Squawtown. Today it is gone.
; Tobasco
Nothing saucy ever happened here—that historians recorded, that is. They believe the name originated in September 1865, when Buckeye generals and Civil War heroes Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman and their wives were traveling east on the Ohio Turnpike (State Route 125) to visit Grant’s relatives in Clermont County. When they passed through a small community, admirers approached their carriage and asked Grant to speak. On that hot day, Grant is said to have removed his jacket and remarked, “It is as hot as Tabasco sauce today.” The veterans who heard him never forgot the general’s words; when the town established a post office in March 1878, they listed the town’s name (spelled incorrectly) as Tobasco. These days, nothing remains of Tobasco but a name. It is a part of a large suburban area filled with subdivisions and shopping strips at Route 125 and Interstate 275 in Union Township.
210 Row
This is the only ghost town that I know of with a number in its name, but there could be others. This one was a little town near Peach Ridge in Athens County. Even the local historical society can provide little information on 210 Row, which sounds like a mining-company town. When I went looking for it, I found no town sign and no indication that the place ever existed. All I noticed were several mobile homes. The town is on some old maps, however, as well as in the modern Ohio Atlas and Gazetteer. It is near State Route 550.
Walhonding
In 1841, William K. Johnson, G. W. Sullivan, and T. S. Humrickhouse platted the town of Walhonding in Coshocton County, when it was a new stop on the Walhonding Canal. They founded the community with hope that Walhonding would become the county seat of a proposed Walhonding County, then under consideration by the Ohio legislature. The proposed county was to be carved from parts of Coshocton, Knox, Holmes, Muskingum, and Licking Counties. Unfortunately for Walhonding, the issue failed by one vote. At the time, the town, population eighty, consisted of two stores, two blacksmiths, a foundry, a post office, and a flour mill that turned out eighty barrels of flour a day. One vote meant oblivion.