Leesville Lake

At a glance

Before the lake

Leesville Lake takes its name from the village of Leesville, a Carroll County community that predates the reservoir by well over a century and was never touched by it. The village was platted August 1, 1812 as "Leesburg" by Thomas Price and Peter Saunders, in what was then One Leg Township, Tuscarawas County. By 1880 the post office had renamed it "Leesville" to avoid confusion with a different Leesburg in Highland County. Leesville was a station on the Underground Railroad and hosted a public-hall visit from abolitionists including Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips and Parker Pillsbury. Its population peaked around 408 in 1880, on farming and coal mining, and had fallen to 127 residents by the 2020 census.

The reservoir sits on McGuire Creek to the village's east and southeast, near Sherrodsville, about two miles from Leesville itself — close enough to borrow the name, far enough that the town's own ground was never flooded. No drowned village, mill, or other pre-dam settlement has been identified inside the reservoir footprint; a USGS gazetteer search for historical place names in and around the pool turned up nothing, in contrast to some other Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District lakes whose namesake towns did go under.

McGuire Creek's own namesake is less settled. No source states directly who the creek was named for, but the best candidate uncovered is Elisha McGuire, born 1812, whose family arrived in what is now Union Township, Carroll County, in 1816. He apprenticed as a blacksmith and wheelwright, opened a wagon-and-plow shop in Carrollton, was elected Carroll County sheriff twice as a Democrat in a Whig-leaning county starting in 1846, ran a foundry casting plow-points, stoves and bells, and in 1852 founded "McGuire's United States Mail and Stage Line," running four-horse coaches from Steubenville to Massillon along what is now Main Street. No document directly ties the creek's name to his family, but he is the most prominent early McGuire in the area's recorded history.

Building the dam

Leesville was one of ten Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District reservoirs built with a permanent conservation pool, combining flood control with recreation, as part of the district's broader response to the catastrophic 1913 Ohio flood. Construction was underway by mid-1935: a June 27, 1935 dispatch in The Free Press-Standard described the project's shift from an "abstract proposition" to something the "immediate vicinity" now felt directly, as ground was broken nearby.

The dam closure was completed in October 1936, according to the federal government's own 1975 engineering summary — though the National Inventory of Dams lists 1937, and newspaper coverage shows work continuing well past the closure date. A September 23, 1937 article called the dam "practically completed," and a December 1938 meeting in Carrollton discussed plans for the finished reservoir's future use. Total land taken came to 161.05 acres purchased outright at the damsite and 4,001.04 acres of flowage easement across the reservoir, for a total of 4,162.09 acres, per the 1977 federal Condition of Improvement report.

A National Youth Administration camp, a New Deal program distinct from the better-known Civilian Conservation Corps, was established on district land near the dam by July 1937 and was still operating and expanding as of January 1939, with a supervisor named Penfold overseeing Tuscarawas County youth building the first stretch of an access road around the reservoir.

No individually named bought-out landowner has been documented for Leesville. The closest primary trace of the land-clearance process is a May 6, 1937 legal notice in The Carroll Journal: the conservancy district invited bids "for the sale of buildings located in Atwood and Leesville Reservoirs," with bid blanks posted at a grocery in Dell Roy, a sale barn in Carrollton, a hardware store in Sherrodsville, Scott's Store in New Cumberland, and McCreary's Store in Leesville village itself — signed by district official Gerald Taylor. No cemetery relocation specific to Leesville's pool has been found.

Stories

A town two centuries old that the lake never touched

Leesville village predates its namesake dam by 124 years and was never flooded by it. It grew past 400 residents on farming and coal mining, hosted Underground Railroad activity and abolitionist speakers, and still stands today — a rare case of a Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District reservoir carrying a historic town's name without ever taking its ground.

Youth work on the dam site

Beyond the construction crews building the earthfill dam, a National Youth Administration camp put young people to federally sponsored work on district land near the dam starting in mid-1937, building an access road around the growing reservoir — a detail easy to overlook next to the more familiar Civilian Conservation Corps story told at other Ohio dams of the era.

The buildings had to go somewhere

In spring 1937, seven months after the dam's closure, the conservancy district ran a legal notice inviting bids on buildings still standing inside the soon-to-flood Atwood and Leesville reservoir footprints. Structures were not condemned and bulldozed but auctioned off piece by piece, with bid drop points at a grocery, a sale barn, a hardware store, and McCreary's Store in Leesville itself.

Ducks arrived before the lake was full

By November 1937, hunters around Carrollton were already finding what one newspaper called "some of the best duck hunting in the state" on the reservoir — while it held, in the paper's own words, "a very small percentage of the water that the dam will eventually impound." Wild geese stopped to rest there too, months before the pool reached its final size.

A marina's story checks out, 50 years later

Today's North Fork Marina describes itself as "formerly known as Petersburg Marina & Campground" and claims roots of "over 70 years." A federal report from 1977 independently lists a "Leesville - Petersburg Marina" among the lake's facilities as of 1975 — two documents, decades apart, describing what is recognizably the same small business.

Not that Leesville Lake

Leesville Lake, Ohio has an unrelated twin in Virginia, on the Roanoke River in Pittsylvania and Bedford counties. A July 2025 drowning "near the Leesville Lake Dam," widely reported by Virginia outlets, concerns that lake, not this one — a trap for anyone searching "Leesville Lake" news without checking the dateline. No confirmed drowning has been documented at the Ohio lake.

The lake since

Leesville Lake's reservoir is widely regarded today as Ohio's top muskellunge water. A 1977 federal environmental report states plainly that "the eggs used for reproduction come from Leesville" — meaning Ohio's statewide muskellunge stocking program draws its brood stock from this one 1,000-acre lake. Modern catch data backs up the reputation: 3,337 reported muskie catches at Leesville between 2020 and 2024, the largest measuring 50.50 inches, with 48 "Fish Ohio" muskie entries in 2023. Ohio's all-time record muskellunge, caught in 1972, came from nearby Piedmont Lake rather than Leesville, but the federal report credits Piedmont, Leesville and Clendening lakes together with producing "several state and national records."

An Ohio Department of Natural Resources gauge at Leesville Lake Dam recorded 11.09 inches of precipitation in June 2004, the greatest monthly total ever recorded at that station. Leesville's own maximum flow of record at the damsite was 2,300 cubic feet per second, set April 20, 1940. In April 2026, Leesville and neighboring Atwood Lake were reported near full outflow, with State Route 39 and other low-lying roads closed by backwater.

Two privately operated marinas serve the lake today, South Fork Marina and North Fork Marina, along with seven youth camps ringing the shoreline: Camp Neosa (Salvation Army), Camp Aldersgate (United Methodist Church), Camp Wakonda (Christ Presbyterian Church), Camp Muskingum (Ohio FFA), plus Falcon Camp and Camp Roosevelt/Firebird. A 10-horsepower motor limit governs the whole lake. In 1974 alone, the lake drew an estimated 328,865 visitors and $75,951 in recreation receipts — more visitors and about three times the receipts of neighboring Clendening Lake on a smaller footprint, a gap the federal record does not explain.

The water

Leesville Lake is a flood-control and recreation reservoir, not a public drinking-water source; no municipal intake has been documented. Its year-round minimum pool of 963.0 feet is maintained by siphons built into the outlet works. The watershed drains 48 square miles of McGuire Creek, a tributary of Conotton Creek in the Tuscarawas River system, 196.4 river-miles above the mouth of the Muskingum River.

A 1977 federal water-quality survey classified Leesville's surface waters as "good," a notably better standing than some neighboring Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District lakes flagged for elevated conductance and sulfate, though it also noted the lake experiences seasonal stratification with anaerobic conditions at depth. A single water sample from September 18, 1974 recorded a water temperature of 22.0°C, dissolved oxygen of 9.3 mg/l, pH of 7.4, and total hardness of 71.0 mg/l.

Leesville's sedimentation rate is the second-slowest recorded among the Muskingum basin lakes in the 1977 federal survey, at 0.65 acre-feet per year per square mile, projecting roughly 6,290 years before the reservoir fills to its conservation pool. A USGS gauge on McGuire Creek near Leesville has recorded discharge continuously since October 1, 1938, one of the longer stream records in the Muskingum system, starting the year after the dam closed.

Sources

• Leesville Lake (Ohio) — Wikipedia)
• Leesville, Ohio — Wikipedia
• Leesville Lake — Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District
• The Ultimate Guide to Carroll County's Leesville Lake — compassohio.com
• About — South Fork Marina, leesvillelake.com
• Leesville Lake North Fork Marina & Campgrounds — ohio.org
• Monthly Water Inventory Report, June 2004 — Ohio Department of Natural Resources
• Carroll County flooding: Atwood and Leesville lakes near full outflow — yourohionews.com
• History of Carroll and Harrison Counties, Ohio (Eckley, 1921) — Internet Archive
• Ohio Memory: Carroll County District Library Newspaper Collection
• Ohio Memory: MWCD vertical-file collection