Carroll Township, Ottawa County

How Carroll Township, Ottawa County began

Carroll Township runs along Lake Erie in northern Ottawa County, the only Carroll Township in Ohio, and holds two very different landmarks: the Magee Marsh Wildlife Area, one of the most celebrated songbird migration stopovers in North America, and the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station, which came within roughly a year of a possible reactor breach in 2002 in what federal regulators ranked as the fifth-most serious U.S. nuclear safety event since 1979. The township's own town hall, built north of Oak Harbor and listed on the National Register in 1976, is its sole listing on the National Register of Historic Places.

Where the name comes from

Not confirmed by any source consulted, beyond the fact that this is the only township of the name in Ohio.

Before the town

No source found documents a Native village, trail, or other specific site within Carroll Township's own boundary. War of 1812-era travelers' accounts describe enormous bird populations on the marshland that is now Magee Marsh, a landscape shaped by the same Great Black Swamp and Lake Erie wetland system that supported Native life along this shore.

Timeline

1. 1840 — Carroll Township became part of the newly organized Ottawa County.
2. 1976-06-07 — Carroll Township Hall, north of Oak Harbor, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
3. 1903 — John Magee bought the marshland that now bears his name, intending to farm it; recurring flooding led him to keep it as hunting grounds instead.
4. 1951 — The Ohio Department of Natural Resources established the 2,202-acre Magee Marsh Wildlife Area.
5. 1960s — Magee Marsh became a Canada goose reintroduction site, producing 9,000 to 11,000 goslings a year in what is described as one of the nation's most successful wildlife reintroduction programs.
6. 1970-09-01 — Construction began on the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station.
7. 1978-07-31 — Davis-Besse began commercial operation.
8. 2002-03 — Maintenance workers found that leaking borated coolant had corroded through more than six inches of the reactor vessel's carbon steel head, leaving only a thin stainless steel liner holding back the pressurized coolant; the NRC later ranked it the fifth most serious U.S. nuclear safety event since 1979.
9. 2004-03 — Davis-Besse restarted after $600 million in repairs and safety upgrades.

Stories

The 'Warbler Capital' and the swamp John Magee couldn't farm

John Magee bought the marsh that carries his name in 1903 meaning to turn it into farmland, following the same logic that had drained most of the Great Black Swamp elsewhere in northwest Ohio. The land refused to cooperate: it kept flooding, and rather than keep fighting it Magee gave up on farming and kept the property as private hunting grounds instead, inadvertently preserving one of the last intact pieces of Lake Erie coastal marsh in the region. Ohio eventually acquired the land for what is now the 2,202-acre Magee Marsh Wildlife Area, which the state used starting in the 1960s to reintroduce Canada geese to the region -- producing 9,000 to 11,000 goslings a year in what became one of the country's most successful wildlife reintroduction programs. The marsh's boardwalk trail, sitting directly on the songbird migration flyway up the lake's western basin, now draws birders from around the world each spring; the Black Swamp Bird Observatory's Biggest Week in American Birding festival, held there every May, pulls in 60,000 to 80,000 visitors in a single season, more people than live in the entire county.

Six inches from a very different kind of headline

Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station had operated quietly on the Carroll Township shoreline since 1978 when, in March 2002, routine maintenance turned up a problem regulators would later call one of the closest calls in the history of American nuclear power. Borated water used to cool the reactor had been leaking, undetected, from cracked control rod mechanisms directly above the reactor vessel, and over time it had eaten through more than six inches of the carbon steel vessel head -- the thick metal cap meant to contain the reactor under enormous pressure. What was left standing between the plant and a breach of the primary coolant system was a thin stainless steel liner, a fraction of an inch thick, that had never been designed to bear that load alone. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission later ranked the incident the fifth most serious U.S. nuclear safety event since the Three Mile Island accident of 1979. The utility spent about $600 million on repairs and new inspection procedures before the plant was allowed to restart in March 2004, and Davis-Besse has operated since under considerably tighter federal scrutiny than it did before.

Photographs

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org

Every historic place in Ottawa County on the full map

Mostly private wells The water here

• Oak Harbor Village70% of residentsLake Erie
• Ottawa County Regional Water District17% of residentsLake Erie
• Carroll Water and Sewer7% of residentsLake Erie
• Port Clinton City6% of residentsLake Erie
• Greenwood Mobile Home Park0% of residentsGroundwater wells (1 wells)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Power plants (1)

Bridges rated poor (1)

Police stations (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (5)

Who holds office

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

Money issues on the ballot since 2022: 1 of 1 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, 2022 to 2023, released 2025-02-04

Cite this page