Buckeye Lake--the Water Around

The state park website lists this as an 18' boat ramp...still think that'd be challenging

When I set out to do some photos of Buckeye Lake for the blog, I was hit by a problem--there is a LOT of ground to cover. I spent about 5 hours in the area, cruising the roads and parks around the lake. I found the Licking Summit I'd read about, and found myself wanting to take my wife back to Millersport for a meal in a neat restaurant by the canal.

It felt a little weird, in the middle of this small town taking pictures of the canal...but worth it

Fact is, the canal ran through this area for a reason--plenty of water already nearby, and water breeds human activity. The Licking River and numerous tributaries were here before the canal or Licking Reservoir was created. All around the lake wherever I stopped there were small streams either flowing into or out of Buckeye Lake, the most prominent of which are the old canals themselves.

This feels like it's not that different from how things were in the 1850's or so

Now, in a previous post I blindly discovered (because I don't look at easily-accessible maps until well after I'm home, because I'm a twit) the north end of the canal, and that doesn't exactly run into the lake any more. There's the spillway there, and that is a project that came long after the canal was defunct. The SOUTH end of the Ohio and Erie, however, does still flow into the lake in a navigable way.

I'm even willing to bet there were advertisements to lure passengers off the canal boats and into town

This led Millersport to invest in a long stretch of docks where boaters can cruise in from the lake, tie up their vessels, and partake in various trade here in town without having to pull their boat out. Easy to hop up for lunch at Hometown Hot Dogs, grab a case of root beer at the Circle K, then cruise back onto the lake for the evening.

I think it's a safe bet this has never seen a canal boat

In other spots, you had a careful balance of people leveraging nature for their own benefit, while still preserving the wetland. At Brooks Park, for instance, a fairly sizable yet shallow stream flows in from the surrounding fields. As it approaches the lake, it deepens--I suspect it was dredged a wee bit at one point based on the drastic depth difference, but I could be wrong--and a picturesque home with retaining walls holding back the yard sits across from a boat ramp.

I love the retaining wall ringing the yard, across from the stones on the opposite shore

One of my trips out to the lake I ran into a man who explained the modern evolution of the lake as a series of coves that had been dug out of the surrounding farm land, flooded, then connected by channel to the main lake so people can get their boats out. Looking at some of these small developments, and the jagged coastline of the lake, that makes a lot of sense to me. Buckeye Lake is really a testament to what makes humans both so incredible and so awful--we will find a way to make nature give us what we want.

Today, just like 180 years ago, you can follow this canal into the lake

Buckeye Lake--Canal Necessity to Ohio's Playground

It looks like a guillotine, but I'm pretty sure this is much less sinister

I've been vaguely aware of Buckeye Lake for some years now. I've lived and worked on the East Side of Columbus ever since I moved here from Cincinnati, and more often than not Buckeye Lake keeps coming up in conversation. People did day trips during the summer, lived out there, wanted to move there, retired there, owned businesses there, took their boats there, grew up there, talked about it generally like people in Massachusetts talk about the Cape--if you got four or five people together, and someone was going to have a story.

Sparkly water and wide open spaces

I didn't get it until I drove out on a whim to see the lake myself. I'd heard the story (like just about everyone else in the state) about the Army Corps of Engineers report about the dam and was a little curious. The Village of Buckeye Lake had an East Coast feel to it--houses and businesses were crammed together to maximize the space, no built up commercial developments, strip malls were rare and very small. A nautical theme all over, including the lighthouse water tower as you get off the highway.

When houses, marinas, restaurants, etc are built on and into the dam...it's no wonder there's a history of near failure

That is a lot of weight pressing down on the dam, and a lot of water pressing against the side

The lake started life as the Licking Summit Reservoir in the late 1820's. It was created by damming the south fork of the Licking River to provide a supply of water to then-new Ohio and Erie Canal, which was sort of a big deal at the time. The Licking Summit Reservoir wasn't actually up to the task of supplying the water necessary, so later on another lake was formed to the north and west of the Licking Summit. A dike that doubled as the canal tow path was put in, and created the division between the Old Reservoir and New Reservoir. You can still see the old canal heading from Buckeye Lake, cutting north and south through Millersport on the west end of the lake.

All that's left of the amusement park Columbus loved before Cedar Point

Something used to sit here, and the fact those pilings are steel reinforced concrete makes me think a hefty building

As we all know railroads killed the canal stars, even the mighty Ohio and Erie. While much of the canal system was either abandoned or sold off to be used for a wide variety of other purposes, the Ohio legislature actually passed a law designating canal reservoirs as state parks. That is how the Licking Summit Reservoir (both of them!) became Buckeye Lake. A big part of this decision stemmed from the sudden popularity of power boats in the early part of the century--bodies of water large enough to accommodate boats were starting to become popular, spawning vacation cottages and parks to provide access.

More than enough space to get out and enjoy a boat on

Continuing to support my conspiracy theory that transportation infrastructure is just one long incestuous soap opera, one of the major reasons Buckeye Lake became so popular was it's central location along the interurban railway. Once the tunnel at Black Hand Gorge was completed, residents of Newark and Columbus were able to hop on a trolley car and take a day trip to the lake--which helped feed the amusement park on the North Shore for decades in the middle of the 20th century. Believe it or not, there used to be an amusement park along the lines of Cedar Point or Kings Island out on Buckeye Lake. It attracted big name bands and musicians, had rides and games, and of course swimming and boating on the lake. Anything you might want to break up the doldrums of an Ohio summer could be found on Buckeye Lake.

With lakeside property in higher and higher demand, people have to get creative rather than give up a chance to be on the water

All that remains of the amusement park is a fountain in the parking lot of the North Shore State Boat Ramp that marks where the main avenue used to lie, and maybe those haunting concrete pilings in the inlet where Crystal Beach's swimming area are--couldn't really find much information on what might have been there. Even still, when that report on the dam came out there wasn't a lot of talk about seriously draining the lake and that in large part has to do with the economic impact of the lake each summer, when people hours and hours from Lake Erie are able to drive down and enjoy time on the water.

These dock and boat holder combos ring the lake almost every chance you get--another example of efficient space use to avoid boathouses

Black Hand Gorge--Interurban Rail Tunnel

I went to Black Hand Gorge for the canal lock, thinking I might be able to see the black hand itself (not being aware it'd been destroyed something like 185 years earlier). But what really drew me in was this random tunnel we found down the trail.

I mean, look at that thing. And I don't mean Katie's infinity scarf.

It wasn't so much the tunnel itself I found fascinating. That part made sense--you're probably sick of my talking about how where there's one mode of transport there's going to be others. There's only so many efficient travel routes in this great nation of ours, so there's going to be overlap. But the thing of it was...there was no hint of what the heck this tunnel was for.

It's long enough you get this neat light-to-dark, dark-to-light effect--must have been fun on a train

It wasn't really big enough for a rail line, based on other tunnels I'd seen. Also, it was hewn out of the rock itself without any additional prettying or reinforcing--something I also thought odd based on my experience. Looking at this now, there'd be no need to line this tunnel because it's cut directly out of the rock. But at the time, I had the Moonville tunnel in my head. But I couldn't see a need for a tunnel that wasn't rail based--couldn't be a canal tow path, you wouldn't put this much work into a road for horse carts or even automobiles just to cut down the gorge.

Keirns tells the story of a blast in the tunnel while under construction that might tie back to this scrawl

There was also this little bit of trivia. It resonated with me because I'd done some looking on what was up here at the preserve (one does not propose a couple hour round-trip to one's wife without having some good sights set up), but none of my initial pings on Black Hand Gorge said anything about a tunnel through the rock. I know better than to think this, but I started having thoughts of some forgotten mystery I could get to the bottom of. An untold story.

The uniform height and arch reminds me of photos I've seen of cathedrals--very impressive to walk through

It wasn't so much an untold story as an undertold story. Some "tunnel" based searches led to me a Wikipedia page, which cited a book by Aaron J. Keirns titled Black Hand Gorge: A Journey Through Time (put out by Little River Publishing). It looked just about perfect for what I wanted to know and did not disappoint. Chapters on the gorge cover everything from the Native American legends to the canal and rail era to "present" day (the book was published in 1995--hard to believe that was 20 years ago, right?). Historical and author's photos provide some fantastic perspective much like I try to achieve here.

Those round spots in the ceiling? Pretty much the only sign of the blasting that took place.

The tunnel was cut for an interurban rail line--think streetcar, but for travelling between cities. They made travel between towns and cities are practical in the 1890's as cars do today, rather than the rail lines that were more of a hassle. The run between Newark and Granville (and by extension, I'm sure, to Columbus) was very successful, and the goal was to extend out to Zanesville--through the gorge, and through Red Rock. It took two shifts of men using dynamite over three months to carve this tunnel out of the rock, and the evidence of the incredible workmanship still shows today.

Red Rock presented some challenges--it was ALL rock

So mystery solved--no grand conspiracy, just an instance of "We only have so many resources, what do we highlight about the gorge?" This rings especially true when you consider Black Hand Gorge is a nature preserve, not a historical one. Which seems like an oversight to me, in a lot of ways, considering the stories around just this one artifact from a bygone era--in "A Journey Through Time" you can read about how the public used the tunnel after the closure of the interurban line (probably after Ford or GM bought it, but that's a story for a different blog).

For now, just try and picture electric trains shuttling back and forth through here each day, people all along the farmland of eastern Ohio taking trips we now consider routine (how many of us commute from Newark to Columbus, or to Zanesville?) but at the time were a huge deal--as much of a game changer in the Ohio economy as the canal system or railroad had been before it.

Incredible to think this was just solid rock--the amount of activity is staggering to think about