Benton Township, Ottawa County

How Benton Township, Ottawa County began

Benton Township occupies northwestern Ottawa County along Lake Erie, with the village of Rocky Ridge, the community of Graytown and the former settlements of Elliston and Limestone. It was heavy forest and swamp until the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern railroad was graded between Elliston and Graytown in 1852-53; settlers who came in the 1860s found no laid-out road, only a path along a creek that one family remembered as an Indian trail. Stave, sawmill and lime businesses cleared the timber, and the township had 2,712 residents by 1880. Its unfarmed lakeshore marsh survives in the Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge.

Incorporated 1850 (set off from Harris Township), by Ottawa County, from part of Harris Township.

Where the name comes from

Not confirmed for this specific township; Ohio has Benton Townships in Hocking, Monroe, Paulding, and Pike counties as well, and no source consulted explains the name's origin here.

Before the town

The 1896 biography of Jacob Pfeifer says that when he took up his farm in Benton Township the only road was an Indian trail along the creek, later known as the Creek road; no other Native site in the township is recorded in the sources consulted. The marshland now in the Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge is a remnant of the Great Black Swamp, ceded under the 1807 Treaty of Detroit.

• Indian trail along the creek (later the Creek road) (trail) — Pfeifer farm, Benton Township (exact creek not named), recalled from the 1860s (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1840 — Ottawa County is formed on March 6 from parts of Sandusky, Erie and Lucas counties; the land of today's Benton Township lies within Harris Township, since Benton itself did not yet exist.
2. 1850 — Benton Township is formed from part of Harris Township.
3. 1852 — While the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern railroad was built through Benton Township, James Ferris cut ties; in 1853 he helped grade the line between Elliston and Graytown and hauled the timber for the Graytown bridge over Toussaint Creek.
4. 1862 — Trinity United Church of Christ is founded at Elliston.
5. 1865 — Henry Messersmith and his brothers Conrad and Jacob bought 500 acres of forest in Section 22, built a stave and heading factory and sawmill, and cleared the tract; there was no laid-out road in the township.
6. 1877 — Peter Lickert built the Methodist church at Rocky Ridge; in 1882 he built the hotel and a planing mill at Graytown.
7. 1880 — The township had 2,712 residents.
8. 1888-1894 — A post office operated at Limestone in Benton Township, with Hetrick as postmaster.
9. 1896 — An Evangelical Association pastor served three Benton Township congregations: Elliston, Rocky Ridge and Blackberry.
10. 1923 — St. Mark's Lutheran Church is founded at Graytown.
11. 1961 — Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge was established under the Migratory Bird Conservation Act, preserving a remnant of the Great Black Swamp's Lake Erie marshes within the township.
12. 2002-2003 (approx.) — A commemorative barn was painted in the township as part of Ohio's bicentennial observance, one placed in every Ohio county to mark the state's 200th anniversary.
13. 2020 — Township population was recorded at 2,449.

Stories

The swamp that became a refuge

Before it was drained for farmland in the nineteenth century, the Great Black Swamp covered most of northwest Ohio, an almost impassable belt of wet forest that slowed both Native travel and settler surveying alike. Almost all of it disappeared under the plow. What survived, in fragments along the Lake Erie shore, includes the marshland now protected as the Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge in Benton Township, established in 1961 under the federal Migratory Bird Conservation Act specifically to keep a piece of that vanished coastal wetland as "an inviolate sanctuary" for migratory birds. The gamble paid off: readers of Birder's World magazine ranked it among their top birding spots in the country in 2002, and the American Bird Conservancy has designated it an Important Bird Area, prized as a spring stopover for songbirds and a wintering ground for bald eagles and sandhill cranes. It is, in effect, the closest thing left in the township to the landscape that existed before the swamp was drained.

Ten bushels of seed, eight bushels of wheat

Jacob Pfeifer, born in Hesse in 1838, came to Benton Township by way of Cleveland, Bellaire and Elliston and took up a farm when the country around it was all forest. The only road was an Indian trail along the creek, later called the Creek road. For his first wheat crop he bought ten bushels of seed in Cleveland at a dollar a bushel, harvested it and threshed it with a flail, and got back eight bushels, at a time when flour sold for $16 a barrel. The family drove nine miles through the woods to reach a mill. Pfeifer later underdrained the farm and bought the first steam threshing rig used in the township, which his sons John and George ran for sixteen years.

Photographs

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · archive.org · archive.org · archive.org · archive.org · archive.org · archive.org · archive.org · ottawa.ohgenweb.org · archive.org

Mostly private wells The water here

• Oak Harbor Village72% of residentsLake Erie
• Ottawa County Regional Water District14% of residentsLake Erie
• Carroll Water and Sewer7% of residentsLake Erie
• Elmore Village7% of residentsLake Erie
• Northwestern W and SD - Oregon Wtln 2000% of residentsLake Erie
• Green Valley Mobile Home Park0% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Public EV charging (1)

Superfund sites (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (8)

Who holds office

Roster as of 2026-04-10: county board of elections.

Money issues on the ballot since 2015: 3 of 3 passed.

Ballot issues

Elections for office

Winners in bold. Results from the county board of elections' official canvass unless marked.

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Financial Audit, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-09-30

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