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

Millersport Canals

So you built canals up and down both sides of the state at ridiculous cost but incredible benefit. Then the fad is over--no one is shipping their products by boat anymore, since they can do it far more efficiently (that is, a lot cheaper) on the railroads that sprang up like so many weeds after the civil war.

Canal providing the buffer between front yards and the road

It also doesn't help that a catastrophic flood essentially wrecked the surprisingly delicate canal system. I mean, it's one thing to keep using that 72" CRT television because you forked over six weeks pay for it in 2003--it's actually kind of insane to fork over another six weeks pay in 2015 to fix it. When you're already losing money, it's not a very difficult decision: do the bare minimum to clear the water way and shut it down for good, or pour millions into repairing locks and dams and aqueducts.

A Clue: if they had decided to repair the Ohio and Erie Canal chances are no one would have put driveways across it.

So they shut them down. Then what? What'd they do? There are a lot of reasons why you can't just leave long tracts of standing water about the country side. Mosquitoes comes first to mind, followed children falling in and drowning. In many places the canals were simply filled in, especially where the canals ran through towns or near spots where someone could use the land.

Canal as we might have seen it 100 years ago--narrow angle

In other places the canal right of ways became rail right of ways. That's pretty evident in my last post, where you had the other end of this canal as part of a rail-to-trail initiative. Pretty frequently, rail lines paralleled or used the canal beds since they'd already done the blasting and digging. It just made sense when you consider that freight and passengers using the railroad would still need to go where the canals had gone.

When the road arrived, it was only natural to follow the canal. The canal already knew where to go

In some places, however, you see the canals left intact. Up in Summit County, there's actually a section of the Ohio and Erie that's maintained as an industrial water supply. There's a big chunk of the old canal corridor up in Northeast Ohio that's being preserved as a National Landmark, actually--the Summit County Engineer has a quick guide to the Scenic Byways if you're ever up that way.

Using water from the canal to feed the stock ponds at the fish hatchery next door

Near Buckeye Lake things are far less grandiose, but still a fantastic preservation of what was. The waterway here appears to feed irrigation canals and streams where it terminates near the Hebron Freshwater Fish Hatchery. Part of the reason they keep the canal around in this spot is to feed that hatchery and the wetlands surrounding it

Another, similar view of the canal as we might have seen it--wider angle

You can see three sets of transport infrastructure from three different eras in this stretch--the modern road, the discontinued rail line, and the canal. It's a neat little Venn diagram of space and time, and if this were a video blog I'd probably do some weird overlay thing to emphasize the passing of time from one mode of transport to the next.

But it's not, and special effects are not my thing. All I can do is provide the information, the current view, and hope the telepathy between writer and reader works.

Ohio Canal Greenway Trail Bridge

Recently I took off down the highway with a vague intention of working toward Buckeye Lake. Or maybe Zanesville, where I distinctly remembered there being some pretty cool bridges. Or maybe even further, see if I could get a historic river crossing at the border with either PA or WV. Like I said, very vague intentions. I felt I would know what I was looking for when I saw it.

Turns out, I did. "Know Thyself," said some foreign dead guy.

Cruising past an exit, I saw a covered bridge at the edge of a farm field. It was right next to a modern bridge, and I thought to myself, "Perfect! I can do a post about the passage of time, and how you can't really see the progress like this anywhere."

No idea why, but I find that metal cap on the concrete fascinating.

As it turns out, the covered bridge was just over 20 years old, built as part of a rail right-of-way-to-trail project. It was still a pretty neat find, since I had to find my way back to it from the next exit. My advanced "It's back that way and I just need to find a road going that way" methods took me along Buckeye Lake and along Canal Road in Millersport--watch this space for a couple posts stemming from that adventure.

In this shot, you can see the canal on the far left, the old right of way in the center, and the field on the right. It's interesting, because you have the reason for transportation on the right--the fields have been here as long as American settlers. The canals came to move the goods grown in those fields. Canals in turn were replaced by the faster and more efficient railroads, which used the already defined and built-up right of ways of the canals in many places.

Railroads were largely replaced by the more flexible trucks, leading to more of this type of thing popping up across streams and rivers across the state. Of course, with private sector tax breaks and bailouts largely replacing infrastructure spending, there's no telling how much longer these bridges will actually be around.

Not all state money is thrown away for private gain, however--clearly the Department of Natural Resources replaced the old rail bridge with something much more hiker friendly, to ensure people can make use of their heritage in a meaningful way.

It's not hard to imagine the bridge that once spanned the gap between these substantial supports. I appreciate the fact the original structure was left in place despite the bridge not needing nearly the strength provided. The effect is two-fold: no wasted resources tearing up the existing stone and putting in new works, and you have a piece of history preserved.

The end result is pretty spiffy. It may not be an 1800's covered bridge but it does have the same simple elegance. The sun playing through the trusses was something to see, and I don't think I was quite able to capture it here as well as I'd hoped--you'll just have to check it out for yourself.

Ohio and Erie Canal Lock 16

Picture it: you're a big time producer of something, maybe pig iron south of Columbus. You know there are plenty of buyers for your iron. Factories and mills in places like Cleveland and Buffalo are just dying to turn iron into expensive things.

There's a minor problem, however...those places are hundreds of miles away. And there's no interstate highway system to send truckloads of iron down. There are hardly roads at all, and even fewer trucks. There also isn't a  railroad, because in the 1820's that little world changer hadn't arrived yet.

So what do you do? Use the rivers, of course. Well, if you're able. Rivers are great, but you still have to get to them, challenging with limited overland options. They also have to have enough water in them to float your barges, but not so much water that your barges crash against the river banks and obstacles. Plus, if you're trying to go up river with a heavy load that might be difficult, expensive, or even impossible if there are falls along the way. Finally, the river you have might not even go within a hundred miles of your customers.

For these (and most likely some other) reasons, canal systems were dug all over the place. You had them in England, in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, in New York. And right here in Ohio, both in the East and the West of the state. I find it interesting that ground was broken on the Ohio and Erie Canal not far from Lock 16 pictured here--in Newark, about as close to Columbus as the canal would ever get on it's way to Portsmouth. This is a difficult thing to comprehend for the modern Ohioan.

Of course, the coming of the railroads largely put the canals out of business because they could move freight so much more quickly than the average 3 mph the canals could attain. Many of the right of ways used by the canals were passed to those rail roads or otherwise developed by private citizens until not much sign of the might canal network remains. However, if you know where to look you can still see reminders of the days when 3 mph in a boat being hauled by a mule was the best way to move 10 tons of freight.

Locks--in case you're not familiar with this somewhat obscure piece of technology--are the system used in canals to move boats through different elevations. A boat needing to move from upriver with a nice high water level would need a safe way to navigate a 5-10 foot drop in elevation, since you can't send a boat loaded with 10 tons of anything up (or even down) a stretch of rapids or mini falls.

The boat moves into the lock--this stone channel pictured below--and a set of gates are opened while another is closed. Moving down stream, the gates (which rested in the cutouts pictured above, where even today you can see where the stone was worn smooth by the opening and closing) are closed after the boat--and the ones at the far end open, allowing the boat and all the trapped water to flow safely on the way. If the boat is moving back upstream, the gates up river are opened--to allow water to flood into the lock, and lift the boat up to the proper height.