Clifton

• Clifton GorgeClifton Gorge was cut by glacial meltwater about 18,000 years ago. John Bryan left the land to Ohio in 1918, and it opened as a state forest park in 1925.

• Woody Hayes1913-1987Ohio State football coach from 1951 to 1978 who won five national titles and 13 ...

How Clifton began

Clifton grew up around a mill established in 1802, first owned by Owen Davis, at the head of the gorge the Little Miami River cuts through dolomite and shale bedrock. Col. Robert Patterson built a woolen mill there that supplied the American army in the War of 1812, and Robert Watson, Timothy Bates and Bennett Lewis laid out the village in 1833; it is said to take its name from the cliffs above the river. By the 1830s it was a busy little industrial town of mills, a distillery, a cotton mill and a tin shop, and a stagecoach stop between Springfield and Cincinnati; when the railroad bypassed it and manufacturing moved on, Clifton settled into the small, historic village of 131 people it remains today, still built around its 1802 mill and the gorge beside it.

Settled 1802, platted 1833, by Owen Davis (mill, 1802); Robert Watson, Timothy Bates and Bennett Lewis (village, 1833).

Where the name comes from

The village takes its name from the cliffs of the gorge the Little Miami River has cut through dolomite and shale just above the mill site.

Before the town

No village, mound or treaty line specific to the Clifton site itself was found in the sources checked, but the gorge and river the village sits beside were part of the same Little Miami corridor used by the Shawnee trail connecting Oldtown, near present Xenia, and a Mad River village to the north near Yellow Springs, a few miles upstream from Clifton (see the Miami Township file). Clifton Gorge itself, a dolomite-and-shale canyon carved by Silurian-period bedrock and glacial meltwater about 15,000 years ago, would have been a landmark on that same stretch of river long before Owen Davis built his mill there in 1802.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee.

Timeline

1. 1802 — Davis Mill, today's Clifton Mill, is established; its first owner is Owen Davis.
2. 1812 — Patterson's woolen mill at Clifton supplies material for the American army during the War of 1812.
3. 1827 — The Accommodation Line stagecoach begins running between Springfield and Cincinnati through Clifton, a route it keeps until 1840, making the village a busy waypoint for travelers.
4. 1833 — Robert Watson, Timothy Bates and Bennett Lewis formally establish the village of Clifton, which becomes the oldest town in Miami Township, reaching about 300 residents.
5. 1834 — The village supports a water-powered flour mill, a sawmill, a large distillery, hog pens, a coppersmith's shop, a furniture factory, a tin store and a three-story cotton mill employing about 100 workers.
6. 1861 — During the Civil War, Clifton Mill (as Davis's original mill became known) produces meal and flour for Union troops.

Stories

A mill town that outlived its own boom

In 1834, Clifton was a genuinely busy manufacturing village: a water-power flour mill, a sawmill, a large distillery, a coppersmith's shop, a furniture factory, a tin store, and a three-story cotton mill running about 100 workers, all packed into a settlement of a few hundred people wedged against the Little Miami gorge. The 1802 mill that started it all kept working through the Civil War, turning out meal and flour for Union troops. But when the railroads came through Ohio in the mid-1800s, they bypassed Clifton's gorge-bound site, and the manufacturers who depended on easy shipment moved on to towns the rails could reach. Clifton never rebuilt that industrial base; the mill that had once anchored a cotton factory and a distillery instead became the village's enduring landmark rather than its economic engine.

A gorge older than any mill

The chasm the village is named for long predates any settler. Clifton Gorge is cut through dolomite and shale bedrock laid down in the Silurian Period, roughly 400 million years ago, and the gorge itself was carved far more recently, by meltwater pouring off retreating glaciers around 15,000 years ago. Owen Davis chose the spot in 1802 precisely because the same falling water that had cut the gorge could also turn a mill wheel; two centuries later, the gorge is preserved as the Clifton Gorge State Nature Preserve, and the mill Davis built is still standing beside it.

Local history sources: xeniagazette.com · villageofclifton.com · en.wikipedia.org · ohiogenealogyexpress.com · en.wikipedia.org · archive.org

No water-system data is linked to Clifton's ZIP codes yet.

Spills reported since 2021 (1)

Money issues on the ballot since 2019: 4 of 4 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.
• Basic Audit, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-09-09

Source: Ohio EPA eDocument portal (edocpub.epa.ohio.gov), indexed 2026-10-14. Facilities are placed on the map from Ohio EPA's own map layers, EPA's Facility Registry, coordinates written in the filings, or a geocoded street address. A permit filed under a private person's name (most are household septic systems) is counted but never named, placed or linked; licenses for individual workers and open-burning notices are left out entirely.

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