Dellroy

• Atwood LakeBuilt 1936 · 1540 acres

How Dellroy began

Dellroy was laid out in 1849 as Cannonsburg, a railroad-age name on Carroll County's western edge, and was renamed Dellroy around 1878 for reasons no surviving record settles. It grew modestly through the 19th century, peaking near 664 residents in 1880, then found a second identity in the 1930s when the Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District dammed Indian Fork, a tributary of Conotton Creek, nearby to form Atwood Lake, flooding the older village of Atwood a few miles upstream and making Dellroy the lake's eastern gateway town. It has been a small recreation and retirement village ever since, with 268 residents in 2020.

Settled 1849, platted 1849 (as Cannonsburg).

Where the name comes from

The village was platted in 1849 as Cannonsburg and renamed Dellroy around 1878; Wikipedia's own article states plainly that the origin of the name Dellroy is disputed, and no other source consulted resolves it.

Before the town

No mound, earthwork, or named Native village has been documented specifically at Dellroy; see the Carroll County file for the county-wide picture. The village sits a few miles from the old settlement of Atwood, now under Atwood Lake, whose own name traces only to the pioneer Atwood family rather than any Native reference. As with the rest of Carroll County, this land passed to the United States under the Treaty of Fort McIntosh (1785); the historic Lenape (Delaware) and Wyandot both traveled and hunted the Conotton and Tuscarawas valleys nearby, though no source ties either nation to a site at Dellroy itself.

Nations recorded here: Lenape (Delaware), Wyandot.

Timeline

1. 1834 — Baptismal records of the United Presbyterian Church show Atwood, a few miles from present Dellroy, already a thriving village on Conotton Creek.
2. 1849 — The village of Cannonsburg - later Dellroy - is platted.
3. 1878 — The railroad reaches the area and Cannonsburg's business shifts to the new rail site, which becomes Atwood village's successor and, around this same year, Cannonsburg itself is renamed Dellroy.
4. 1880 — Dellroy's population reaches 664, its historical high point.
5. 1932-1936 — The Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District builds Atwood Dam on Indian Fork, a tributary of Conotton Creek; the old village of Atwood is purchased, demolished, and inundated to form Atwood Lake.
6. 1930s — Dellroy becomes established as the lake's eastern gateway village as recreational use of the new reservoir grows.
7. 1965 — The Atwood Lake Resort and Conference Center opens nearby, anchoring the area's tourist economy for the next half-century.

Stories

The village under the lake

A few miles upstream of Dellroy, the village of Atwood was old enough that a Presbyterian congregation was baptizing children there by 1834 and thriving enough to keep its own businesses until the railroad came through in 1878 and pulled trade away to the rail site. Atwood held on as a smaller place for another half-century until the Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District, rebuilding flood control across the Tuscarawas system after the disastrous 1913 flood, chose the site for a dam. The village was bought out, torn down, and drowned under what became Atwood Lake between 1932 and 1936. When the reservoir runs low, visitors can still see the foundation stones of Atwood's vanished buildings and the roadbed of its old rail spur breaking the surface near Dellroy - the only trace left of a town that was once the more important of the two.

Photographs

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · en.wikivoyage.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org

Mostly private wells The water here

• Fohl Village MHP100% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Basic Audit, 2022 to 2023, released 2024-11-12

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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