USA > Ohio > Hamilton County > History of Hamilton County, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches > Part 55
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The work went briskly forward. By the middle of December, 1825, thirty-one thousand nine hundred and ninety-four dollars had been expended upon the line. Within a year from that time, thirty-one of the forty-three miles under contract were completed, and the twelve miles remaining, mostly heavy work at the lower end of the canal, were in such a state of forwardness as to prom- ise completion by the first of the ensuing July. The fin- ished work included nine locks, five aqueducts, twenty stone culverts of three to twenty feet chord, with numer- ous paved waste weirs, road bridges, etc. There were some delays in the further prosecution of the work; but before the close of 1827, this first division of the canal, extending from the head of Main street in Cincinnati to the mouth of the Miami feeder, then reported as a dis- tance of forty-four miles, was completed. The commis- sioners say, in their sixth annual report :
On the twenty-eighth of November, three fine boats, crowded with citizens, delighted with the novelty and interest of the occasion, left the basin six miles north of Cincinnati, * and proceeded to Middletown with the most perfect success. The progress of the boats was equal to about three miles an hour, through the course of the whole line, includ- ing the detention at the locks and all other causes of delay, which are
numerous in a first attempt to navigate a new canal, when masters, hands, and horses are inexperienced, and often the canal itself is in im- perfect order. The boats returned to the basin with equal snecess, and it is understood have made several trips since, carrying passengers and freight.
On the fourth of July next previous, the first boat nav- igating the Ohio & Erie canal had descended triumph- antly from Akron to Cleveland, thirty-eight miles, and was received, in its passage and its entry into the city, with great acclamation.
The entire line of the Miami canal, so far as author- ized, was now under contract, and to be completed by the first of June, 1828. By the seventeenth of March damages caused by floods and the effects of the winter upon the lower part of the route had been repaired so as to admit of the passage of boats through from Middle- town to Cincinnati. The work elsewhere was unavoida- bly retarded, to the disappointment of the commissioners ; and it was not until the month of November that the en- tire division from Cincinnati to Dayton was finished. Even then the dam over Mad river, for the feeder from that stream, was incomplete, from injuries received in the floods of January preceding. A feeder from the Mi- ami, a short distance above Middletown, had also been made, and a short side-cut to connect the canal with Hamilton had been constructed at a cost of six to seven thousand dollars, of which all but two thousand was con- tributed by the citizens of Hamilton and Rossville. The length of the division was sixty-five miles, twenty chains, and thirty-four links, with nearly three miles of side-cut and feeders. It had cost seven hundred and forty-six thousand eight hundred and fifty-two dollars and seventy cents, averaging per mile ten thousand nine hundred and eighty-three dollars and twelve cents-an excess above the estimates, when the cost of connecting the canal with the Ohio river is added, of ahout one hundred and thirty- five thousand dollars. The tolls collected on the lower division of the canal, to the first of December, 1828, amounted to eight thousand and forty-two dollars and seventy cents. The tolls received during the next year, the first after the completion of the division, were twenty thousand nine hundred and forty-one dollars and thirty- six cents-a remarkably close approximation to the esti- mate of the commissioners some years before. The canal board now reports, among other matters :
. "Navigation has been successfully maintained through- out the season on the canal, with the exception of the interruptions caused by two successive failures in one of the heavy embankments on Mill creek, by which it was suspended in the aggregate considerably upwards of a month. Contracts have been made for the extension of this canal from the head of Main street in the city of Cincinnati, to the termination of the level at the head of Broadway, and for the construction of a sec- tion crossing the immediate valley of Deer creek. It is proposed to put the remainder of the line to the river under contract in the ensuing spring."
While the work was in progress, in August, 1828, the Western Pioneer, published at Cincinnati, thus made a note of it:
The Ohio & Miami canals are advancing steadily. The latter is ex-
* The boats were obliged to start from this point on account of the accidental breach in one of the aqueducts, which prevented for a little longer time navigation between the basin and the city.
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HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO.
pected to be completed and in operation this fall. This grand enter- prise has thus far equaled, if not exceeded, the best expectations of its most sanguine friends, whether in regard of the expense of construc- tion, the utility of the improvement itself, or the amount of revenue arising from it. Forty-two miles only of the Miami canal are in ope- ration, and on that part of the line, too, where, from its contiguity to market, it is best needed, and of course least used. But on this part of the line, we were told by the collector of tolls at Cincinnati a few days ago, that the amount received for the quarter ending on the seventeenth ultimo, for tolls, was about three thousand dollars. It should also be taken into the account that this quarter occupies that part of the year when least produce is taken to market, and when of course the smallest amount of revenue would arise from it.
In 1824, as before indicated, the remainder of the route, the division running northwardly from Dayton to the Maumee at Fort Defiance, and thence northeast- ward along that river to its mouth at the western extrem- ity of Lake Erie, had been located in good part, and the next year it was regularly surveyed. This extension was not in the canal policy of the State, as determined by the original law for the construction of the canals; but happily, by the generous action of the General Govern- ment, it was able in a very few years to provide for the completion of the work. In response to a memorial from the State legislature, backed by pressing solicita- tions of some of the most eminent citizens of Ohio, Congress, in the session of 1827-8, made a grant of a quantity of public land equal to one-half of five sections in width, on each side of the route proposed for the canal extension, between Dayton and the Maumee, so far as the same should be located through the Congress lands. In return it was simply provided that all persons or property of the United States should forever pass over said canals free of tolls. The amount of this grant, as afterwards ascertained, was three hundred and eighty- four thousand acres. Estimating its value by the mini- mum price put by the act of Congress upon the reserved alternate sections (two dollars and fiity cents per acre), the market value of the grant at that time was very nearly a million of dollars (nine hundred and sixty thou- sand dollars). The same act granted the State half a million acres more, in aid of its canals. This grant was conditioned upon the completion within five years of the canals already begun at the time of the passage of the act, and the grant for the Miami extension upon the commencement of the work within five and its completion within twenty years, on penalty of payment by the State to the Federal Government of the value of the lands. The legislature accepted the former, but declined the latter grant, as it was feared that it might be impossible to fulfil the conditions. The
Solons of the State were not over-anxious to pledge it to the excavation of a costly work through a long stretch of country, most of which was still a howling wilderness. In this exigency, by great good fortune, Judge Jacob Burnet, of Cincinnati, in the session of 1829-30, took his seat in the Senate of the United States, as successor of General Harrison, at once manifested a lively interest in the subject, and presently secured the passage of an act repealing the twenty-year and forfeiture clauses, and mak- ing the grant equivalent to five sections for every mile of canal located on land previously sold, as well as that unsold, by the General Government. In pursuance of
that measure, the land was located under direction of the governor, and by it, undoubtedly, the extension was effected.
The Miami Canal, in its earlier years at least, was a financial success. In 1838, the net tolls, beyond re- pairs and expense of collection, etc., were two hundred and nine thousand seven hundred and seventy-three dollars, or a little more than four and a half per cent. on the cost of construction. In the year 1840, the tolls paid over six per cent. on original cost. The canal is still used to advantage, but the extreme lower end of it, in the city of Cincinnati, was abandoned some years ago, and turned into Eggleston-avenue sewer. As these pages are closed a measure is being pressed upon the legisla- ture to allow the abandonment of the canal below the basin near Cumminsville, and give up the berme-bank of the six miles thus vacated for railroad purposes, letting the College Hill narrow-guage, and very likely other rail- roads, into the city on their own tracks.
A MIAMI SHIP CANAL.
For many years, and especially during those immedi- ately following the late war, the project was mooted of deepening and widening the Miami canal, so as to per- mit the passage of lake-going vessels to and from the Ohio river. At last Congress, during the session of 1879-'80, took cognizance of the movement as of na- tional importance, and made a grant from the treasury sufficient to secure a preliminary survey of the line with a view to its conversion into a ship canal. Captain W. S. Williams, of Canton, in this State, a gentleman of long experience in engineering on Ohio canals, began the survey during the warm season of 1880 from Cincinnati to Paulding Junction, one hundred and eighty miles, whence the work was done to the other terminus by Mr. Ward, a Newark engineer. They report informally that it will be necessary to widen the canal to nearly double its present width, deepen it twelve to fourteen feet, strengthen its banks and solidify its bed, and change its . course slightly at some points in Cincinnati, probably abandoning the present canal bed from some point near Cumminsville, and there turning the new canal into Mill creek. The last suggestion is considered specially im- portant in the city, as enabling its people to carry out the plans so frequently discussed there and by the State board of public works, of abandoning the present canal bed in the city limits, using it for railroad purposes, and converting Mill creek bottom into a great basin where coal could be shipped without transfer direct from the, river to the north, and where an immense amount of water power could be obtained without risk on the part of the State or city. Final action in the matter has not yet been taken, as these pages go through the press.
THE WHITEWATER CANAL.
This extended to Cincinnati from the village of Har- rison, on the Whitewater river and Indiana State line, reaching the city by way of the Whitewater, Great Miami and Ohio valleys, entering the latter between Cleves and North Bend, through a tunnel of one thou- sand and nine hundred feet length, upon the old farm
22I
HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO.
of General Harrison, near his tomb. The Dry Fork of Whitewater and the Little Miami were crossed by aque- ducts ; Mill Creek by a stone arch. The work was twenty- five miles long, and at Harrison joined the Whitewater canal of Indiana, which extended fifty-five miles further, to the National road at Cambridge, in that State. By this connection it made tributary to Cincinnati a rich and fertile district in Indiana, with an area of nearly three thousand square miles, and was justly considered in its day an important improvement. It also brought a large amount of water-power to the city, estimated as sufficient to turn ninety runs of millstones.
The means for its construction, about eight hundred thousand dollars, were furnished as follows: Fifty thou- sand dollars by the State of Ohio, forty thousand dollars by the city of Cincinnati, ninety thousand by citizens, in stock subscriptions for shares of one hundred dollars each ; and the remainder was raised upon bonds and cer- tificates. A great freshet in December, 1846, swept off the feeder, dam, and a mile of the canal south of Harri- son ; and in order to make the necessary repairs, the city was again called upon to lend its credit to the amount of thirty thousand dollars to the canal; which was accord- ingly repaired the next summer and fall. During the latter season the entrance to the canal at Harrison was destroyed by high water, which compelled a relocation on higher ground the next year, which the city's financial aid enabled the company to make.
The second disaster is rather difficult to account for, if the tradition be true that the enterprise was in view so long before its consummation as 1832, when Mr. E. D. Mansfield and others of its intelligent friends at Cincin- nati availed themselves of the great flood of that year to get the high water mark at Harrison for a point of be- ginning, and thence make their calculations for the de- scent to the city. The canal was not finished until more than ten years afterwards, the first boat upon it reach- ing the city in November, 1843. It was used for a num- ber of years, but in 1863, having been abandoned, its bed within the city limits and the Pearl street market place were leased to the Cincinnati & Indianapolis rail- road company, for their tracks and depot, for the sum of six thousand dollars per annum for the first five years. The Plum street depot stands at or near the old ter- minus, and the remainder of the canal bed or tow-path to Harrison is partly used by the railroad.
THE LOUISVILLE SHIP CANAL.
An enterprise in which shippers and merchants in the Miami country have always felt a healthy interest is the canal around the falls of the Ohio, at Louisville. In 1818 the Jeffersonville canal company, for the purpose of constructing such canal, was incorporated by the In- diana legislature, and Jacob Burnet, Henry Bechtle, and other prominent Cincinnatians, were named in the act as among the directors. The charter was not to ex- pire until 1899, but the canal was to be finished under it by the close of 1824. It was to be two and three- fourths miles long, with an average depth of forty-five feet, a width at the bottom of fifty feet, and at the top
of one hundred. The capital stock was one million of dollars, in twenty thousand fifty dollar shares. The privilege of a lottery, with prizes amounting to one hun- dred and fifty thousand dollars, was also granted, and was faithfully used. The lottery was drawn in April, 1819, and the work seems to have been waiting for it, since it was begun almost at once, during the next month. The subsequent history of the canal does not specially concern this chapter.
CHAPTER XVII.
ROADS.
THE ROAD is that physical sign or smybol by which you will best understand any age or people. If they have no roads they are savages; for the road is a creation of man and a type of civilized society. .
If you inquire after commerce, look at the roads, for roads are the ducts of trade. If you wish to know whether society is stagnant, learning scholastic, religion a dead formality, you may learn something by going into universities and libraries-some- thing also by the work that is doing on cathedrals and churches, or in them; but quite as much by looking at the roads. For if there is any motion in society, the road, which is the symbol of motion, will in- dicate the fact. Where there is activity, or enlargement, or a liberaliz- ing spirit of any kind, then there is intercourse and travel; and these require roads. So if there is any kind of advancement going on, if new ideas are abroad and new hopes rising, then you will see it by the roads that are building. Nothing makes an inroad without making a road. All creative action, whether in government, industry, thought, or reli- gion, creates roads.
REV. HORACE BUSIINELL, D. D., "The Day of Roads." THE PIONEER ROADS.
It is interesting to note that the very first publication, in any relation to the founding of Cincinnati, brings in the mention of a road. September 6, 1788, when Messrs. Denman & Filson put forth through the Ken- tucky Gazette a prospectus for the laying-off a town "upon that excellent situation" opposite the mouth of the Lick- ing, "on the northwest side of the Ohio," they accompa- nied it with this announcement: "The fifteenth day of September is appointed for a large company to meet in Lexington and make a road from there to the mouth of the Licking, provided Judge Symmes arrives, being daily expected." The judge did not go to Lexington at that time; but the party was nevertheless formed without his presence, and executed its purpose within a week, Judge Symmes meeting it when he "landed at Miami" (the site of Cincinnati) on the twenty-second of the same month, and enjoying its company and protection as an escort during his explorations to the northward, until their dis- content at his unwillingness to let them destroy a small Indian camp, with its wretched inhabitants, sent them home. But, however well marked or "blazed" was their road through the wilderness, it was little used at first by the Losantiville people or their occasional visitors. The common way from the Miami settlements to Lexington continued to be by Limestone Point (Maysville), going thither by boat, keeping carefully on "the Virginia (Ken- tucky) side," through fear of the lurking savage, and
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HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO.
thence sixty-four miles to the metropolis of the infant State, all the way through almost pathless and uninhab- ited woods, except at the Blue Licks, where a man named Lyons had established a station and was engaged in salt- making. At Lexington, if a person wished to go to the east, it was customary to post written notices upon the trees that at such a date a party would be made up at Crab Orchard to traverse the wild country beyond that; and when a sufficient company had assembled to give reasonable promise of successful defence against any or- dinary war-party of Indians, it would take its departure from that point, bearing all needed supplies with them. Occasionally travellers would go to Limestone and pole, paddle, or pull their way up to Wheeling; but the other is said to have been the way usually preferred. After the organization of Hamilton county, the public officers who lived at Columbia commonly came down to Cincinnati in canoes or crossed and walked down "on the Virginia side," crossing again when they reached the mouth of the Licking. Even the canoe journey was not always safe, as an incident related in chapter VIII of this work shows. As for the densely wooded road or trail along the north bank between the two places, it was long un- safe, as the bloodthirsty savage still haunted the hillsides and thickets. The first road out of Losantiville in this direction ran nearly upon the subsequent line of the turnpike-as it needs must, from the narrowness of the strip much of the way between the hills and the river. It was, of course, not far from the river bank, and was but wide enough for the movement of a single wagon. Approaching the town above Deer creek, near the foot of Mount Adams, it descended westwardly about four hun- dred feet, crossed the creek, trended off in a sontherly direction along its west bank with an ascending grade, which led up to the line of the present Symmes street, thence running directly toward and past Fort Washington, diverging east of it, at the intersection of Lawrence, going on both sides of the fort, and so entering the vil- lage.
To the north and northwest of the town, the valley of Mill creek offered the only routes over which a road could reach the city without climbing steep hills and descending sharp declivities. Out this way, accordingly, the old "Hamilton road" gradually pushed-at first to Ludlow's station, and then, under military auspices, to Fort Hamilton, and so on through the chain of military posts to the Maumee. In its use for the march of the legions of the United States this road, for some years in the last decade of the last century, deserved almost the fame of the great Roman ways by which the conquering eagles were carried to the very borders of the empire. For many years it furnished the only convenient ave- nue of access to the back country; and in 1841 it is noted by Mr. Cist as, what it may still be considered, being the most important wagon road out of Cincinnati. About that time a turnpike of twenty-five miles length was constructed upon its line.
One of the early wagon roads of greatest importance to Cincinnati was the "Anderson State road," connecting it with Chillicothe. It was a common road, cut through
the woods at the expense of the State (about eighteen dollars a mile, exclusive of bridges), by Colonel Richard C. Anderson, of Chillicothe. It was made about forty feet wide, and was long the great thoroughfare between Cincinnati and the east. The "Milford pike" runs near its line for. a large part of the distance.
ROAD LEGISLATION.
One of the first acts of the territorial legislature, sitting in Cincinnati in the fall of 1799, was for the maintenance of a road from Marietta to that place, and to provide generally for the opening of roads and highways. Almost ten years before this, at the very first assembling of the general court of quarter sessions of the peace for Ham- ilton county, created by Governor St. Clair, and meeting a month afterwards (February 2, 1790) in Cincinnati, prompt attention had been given to similar matters. A "road or path" was ordered to be opened from the vil- lage to "the city Miami," by way of Ludlow's trace and Stone lick, and down the west side of Mill creek and along the south foot of the Ohio river hills to the said "city Miami,"-Symmes' prospective city, now occupied in part by the villages of North Bend and Cleves. The citizens of the eastern terminus were to be called out to open and finish the road to the west horder of Cincinnati township; and Mr. Darins Curtis Orcutt was appointed commissioner of highways to rally for a similar purpose, at their end of the line, the good people of Miami town- ship. The whole was to be finished within two months. On the petition of citizens of Columbia, another road was ordered to be opened-one from Fort Miami to "the south corner of Captain Mercer's lots," thence to the Little Miami, and along that stream to William Flinn's house, and thence by Turkey bottom to the most conve- nient ford to Wickersham's mill. This was to be com- pleted in one month. The overseer of roads for Miami township reported a road as completed from North Bend to South Bend.
Now came the tug of war. Then, as later, there was vigorous shirking of road duty. At the next session of the court came James Goudy, overseer of highways for Cincinnati township, and reported that he had duly noti- fied the citizens within his bailiwick to turn out for the construction of the road to South Bend, but that "the greatest majority refused to attend on his notification, and in consequence the road remains unfinished." Where- upon the court promptly mulcted the recusant Cincin- nati township in the sum of one hundred "Spanish milled dollars."
By the same authority, under a jurisdiction which would be considered quite unique in these days, certain streets were directed to be opened through Columbia and the adjoining lands. Luke Foster, Ephraim Kibby, and Joseph Reeder were appointed commissioners to "regu- late the streets" in that village, and similarly Isaac Mar- tin, Jacob Reeder, and James Cunningham were ap- pointed to open and clear out the streets of Cincinnati.
At a session of the court in 1792, the opening of a road, petitioned for by the Cincinnatians, was ordered to be made nearly on a direct line on Mill creek, by " Lud-
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HISTORY OF HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO. .
low's station, White's improvement, Cunningham's sec- tion of land, and as far as Runyan's improvement."
FURTHER FROM THE RECORDS.
The following items, never before published, have been carefully abstracted from the most authentic records and traditions, and are alike instructive and interesting, inasmuch as they inform the reader at once of the first roads in the Symmes purchase. In connection are found the old army traces, location of first stations, and names of pioneer surveyors, and their assistants. Where names are given in clusters of two or three, the name of the principal surveyor comes first; and herein many readers will find, for the first time, perhaps, their grand- father's, or great-grandfather's, name in print:
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