Buckeye Lake

At a glance

Before the lake

Before the canal era, the area now under Buckeye Lake was a large swamp straddling the drainage divide between the Scioto and Muskingum watersheds — locally known as "Buffalo Swamp" or "the Big Swamp," a name attributed to Ohio Company explorer Christopher Gist as early as 1751. The swamp sat at the highest point between the Licking and Scioto rivers, which is exactly why the state later chose it as a canal feeder site.

In 1801 federal surveyor Elnathan Schofield mapped the area for 640-acre land grants to Canadian and Nova Scotian refugees of the Revolutionary War, measuring the pre-dam swamp at roughly 5 miles long and 400-500 yards across — far smaller than the reservoir that followed.

One account, not independently confirmed by a second source, describes an ancient stone mound near the dam site — its base 182 feet across, at least 57 feet tall — that was quarried for dam construction material in 1831-32: 75 teams reportedly hauled some 15,000 wagon loads of stone from it over two years, destroying it along with sixteen smaller mounds around its base. Farmers digging into one of the smaller mounds in 1850 found a wood-slab burial.

Building the dam

Ohio authorized the Ohio and Erie Canal on July 4, 1825. The canal needed a dependable water supply at its highest point, so the state dammed the swamp to create the Licking Summit Reservoir, blocking drainage into the South Fork of the Licking River. The state's own 1912 official plat map, printed by the Board of Public Works, records that construction "was commenced in 1828 and completed in 1832 by the addition of 500 acres at the west end of the reservoir and called the 'New Reservoir.'" Most secondary sources instead give 1826-1830 for the same project — the two datings are not resolved.

That "New Reservoir" addition is very likely the same enlargement described in a 2021 Ohio EPA-approved watershed plan, which explains that the original dam held too little water to operate the canal, so the impoundment was enlarged and a feeder channel was built to divert water from the South Fork Licking River. That ditch survives today as the Reservoir Feeder, or Kirkersville Feeder Canal, and still supplies an estimated 23% of the lake's annual phosphorus load.

No primary 1820s land-acquisition record — a list of landowners paid, or a tally of acres taken — has been located for the original taking. The 1912, 1920 and 1922 state plat surveys of the lake's shoreline do record landowner names decades later: Swisher, Davis, Bound's Heirs, Crane, Fickle Heirs, Zollinger, W. Murphy (153.67 acres), Hummel Heirs, Alspach, Neel and dozens more, along with platted resort communities and islands including Charleston, Lewis, Keller and Crane. These are 1912-1922 shoreline owners, not confirmed original 1820s grantees.

When the reservoir was impounded, a roughly 50-acre floating mat of sphagnum moss tore loose from the swamp floor rather than submerging — becoming Cranberry Bog (see Stories, below). By 1894, with canal traffic fading against the railroads, the Ohio General Assembly designated the state's canal feeder reservoirs as public parks; the Licking Summit Reservoir was renamed Buckeye Lake on May 21, 1894, championed by former Canal Superintendent George Watkins.

Stories

Cranberry Bog, a floating island older than the state park

Cranberry Bog is a floating mat of sphagnum moss, now roughly 8 acres (down from an estimated 50 at its start), that has ridden on the lake's surface since the 1826 impoundment — it broke free of the swamp floor rather than submerging, because sphagnum moss is buoyant. Described by multiple sources as possibly the only floating bog of its kind in the world, it carries boreal-relict plants left behind by the retreat of the Wisconsin glaciation, including carnivorous round-leaved sundew and pitcher plants, plus the cranberry vines that give it its name. It became a National Natural Landmark in October 1968 and an Ohio State Nature Preserve in 1977; public access is normally restricted, with occasional ODNR-guided visits.

The 1922 tornado

On June 12, 1922, a tornado struck Buckeye Lake park directly. The next morning's Democratic Banner reported a search underway for bodies believed buried in the storm-swept park; at least three Columbus-area residents died — Myron B. Hill, Mrs. William H. Wohrle, and M. Scigler — with a fourth, Olive Beau of Newark, reported missing, and seven small boats missing on the lake. Damage was estimated at $100,000. A same-day Cleveland Czech-language paper, Svet, instead reported ten people killed when a dressing house collapsed — the two death tolls have never been reconciled against a confirmed final count.

The 1924 Colored Day drowning

On August 8, 1924, during the Muskingum Valley Colored Elks #82's annual "Colored Day" celebration, the pier dance hall at the Lake Breeze Hotel collapsed when its pilings gave way, dropping dancers into the water and drowning seven people. Officially ruled accidental, the event has been persistently rumored locally to be connected to Klan activity, given its timing squarely between the two Klan rallies described below — though no source offers physical evidence for that connection.

The Klan at the lake

Buckeye Lake hosted two of the largest Ku Klux Klan "Konclaves" in U.S. history, in 1923 and 1925, the second promoted at the time as the largest Konclave in the United States. Both were organized in part by D.C. Stephenson, the Indiana Klan's "Grand Dragon," who kept a summer home at the lake and was later convicted of manslaughter in Indiana. National Klan speakers addressed crowds at the lake, Klan weddings were performed on its shores, and the interurban railway ran special cars to ferry attendees.

The amusement park's rise and uncertain fall

By the 1910s the lake was marketed as "Ohio's Inland Seashore" and the "Atlantic City of the Middle West." The Crystal Ballroom, opened in the 1930s, hosted big bands including Guy Lombardo, Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Louis Armstrong and Bob Hope; a historical marker adds that Dorsey's band played there "with his singer Frank Sinatra," and that the park drew as many as 50,000 visitors a day at its 1940s peak. Sources disagree on when it ended: tourism histories say the park closed in 1970 after a failed country-and-western relaunch, but two on-site historical markers instead describe the resort as having "operated until the mid 1960s" or having "declined in the 1960s." Today only a single fountain survives, relocated to the state park's parking lot.

The lake since

The lake's dam nearly failed in the 21st century. In March 2015 the Army Corps of Engineers' Huntington District, in a $140,000 review, found the 4.1-mile earthen embankment in danger of failure — not from age alone but because more than 370 homes and other structures had been built directly on or into it over more than a century of unregulated lakeside development, an arrangement described as unique among dams of its length in the United States. A failure was projected to endanger roughly 3,000 people and threaten 2,100 homes and businesses downstream. Governor John Kasich approved $150 million in emergency funding, and ODNR lowered the lake about 3 feet as an immediate risk-reduction step.

The fix, delivered 2015-2018 under a construction-manager-at-risk model, was a freestanding soil-mix gravity dam and buttress wall built upstream of, not replacing, the historic embankment — engineered so the new structure would not depend on the old one's integrity. Phase 1 alone finished nearly a year ahead of schedule. The project was substantially complete by November 8, 2018, at a final cost of about $107 million (construction-trade coverage cites $110 million for the contract specifically) — about $40 million under the emergency budget and roughly two years ahead of the original timeline. The lake was not returned to full summer pool until 2019. The rebuild won the 2019 National Dam Rehabilitation Project of the Year award from the Association of State Dam Safety Officials and is described as the largest capital-improvements project in ODNR's 70-year history. A multipurpose recreational trail, credited in part to the advocacy group Bike Buckeye Lake, now runs atop the reconstructed dam.

Water quality has been a persistent, separate problem. Buckeye Lake has had toxic algal blooms every year since 2010, driven mainly by agricultural runoff through the Reservoir Feeder channel, which supplies roughly 23% of the lake's total phosphorus load annually from an 11,024-acre, 61%-row-crop watershed; the Millersport sewage treatment plant contributes an estimated 1.3%. Local advocacy group Buckeye Lake for Tomorrow's 2013 Nutrient Reduction Plan underlies a 2021 Ohio EPA-approved watershed plan targeting streambank erosion, failing home septic systems and agricultural runoff. Conditions have fluctuated: one resident called water quality "probably the poorest since the early 80s" in earlier coverage, while a January 2023 University of Toledo report described the lake as "enjoying its best water quality in years," cautioning that blooms remain a threat.

The water

Buckeye Lake is not used as a public drinking-water source. The Village of Buckeye Lake buys finished water from the neighboring Village of Millersport rather than drawing from the lake, and Millersport's own water system draws from a protected aquifer roughly 75 feet down, unrelated to the lake's water quality. So the lake's algal-bloom problems are a recreation, ecology and fish-kill issue rather than a drinking-water-treatment one for the two nearest villages.

The lake averages only about 5 feet deep, shallow even by the standards of Ohio's other canal-feeder lakes, which is a major driver of its hypereutrophic, bloom-prone condition. It drains roughly 45 square miles across two HUC-12 subwatersheds into the South Fork Licking River, the same stream the original dike was built to block. Saugeye fishing is a standout: Buckeye Lake has had the second-highest number of statewide "Fish Ohio" saugeye award submissions of any Ohio lake in recent years, and ODNR says "no other lake in Ohio produces more saugeye over 21 inches." The H2Ohio-funded Brooks Park wetland project now filters Murphy's Run, a south-shore tributary, targeting removal of up to 1,620 pounds of nitrogen and 784 pounds of phosphorus a year before it reaches the lake.

Sources

• Buckeye Lake (Ohio), Wikipedia)
• Buckeye Lake State Park, Wikipedia
• Cranberry Bog State Nature Preserve, Wikipedia
• Ku Klux Klan Konclaves at Buckeye Lake, Wikipedia
• Buckeye Lake State Park, ODNR
• Lost Columbus: Relive Buckeye Lake's Heyday, Columbus Monthly
• From Great Swamp to Great Destination, Escape to Buckeye Lake
• How Buckeye Lake Came to Be, Buckeye Lake Yacht Club
• When The Klan Came to the Lake, Buckeye Lake Yacht Club
• Buckeye Lake Dam Improvements, damsafety.org
• ASI Continues $110M Rebuild of Buckeye Lake Dam, Construction Equipment Guide
• Buckeye Lake Reopens Its Waters, WOSU
• Buckeye Lake Enjoying Best Water Quality in Years, UToledo News
• The Horrible History of Buckeye Lake, Steven Outside blog
• Buckeye Lake's Floating Cranberry Island, LakeScientist