Ludlow Falls

How Ludlow Falls began

Ludlow Falls is a small village in Union Township, Miami County, named for the 15-foot waterfall on Ludlow Creek that runs through it, which in turn takes its name from surveyor Israel Ludlow, a founder of Cincinnati and Dayton. A rail line built in 1881 between Springfield, Ohio, and Indianapolis once ran through the village before it was abandoned in 1976. Nearby, on land now part of the Brukner Nature Center just outside the village, stands the 1804 Benjamin and Phebe Iddings Log House, the oldest documented building in Miami County. The village is best known today for its annual lighting of the falls, a tradition begun by Boy Scouts around 1949-50.

Where the name comes from

Named for the waterfall on Ludlow Creek that runs through the village; the creek itself is named for Israel Ludlow, a surveyor who helped found Cincinnati and Dayton.

Before the town

No Native American sites, villages, or trails specific to Ludlow Falls itself are recorded. The county's broader Shawnee and Miami record centers on Pickawillany and Piqua, and Hopewell/Adena mound sites lie elsewhere in the county.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee, Miami.

Timeline

1. 1802-04 — Quakers from the Carolinas begin settling Union Township, where Caleb Mendenhall's cabin hosts the first Friends' meetings; the Coppock family, from South Carolina, enter the farm southwest of the future Ludlow Falls in 1804.
2. 1804 — Benjamin and Phebe Iddings, having come up the Stillwater River into Newton Township with their family, built a two-story log house near present-day Ludlow Falls, now the oldest surviving building in Miami County.
3. 1812 — William Coppock, a freighter who ran wagons between Cincinnati and the outlying settlements from his home near Ludlow Falls, dies; his burial is one of the first in the East Union Cemetery, a Friends' burying ground.
4. 1870s — A quarry is attempted at the falls of Ludlow Creek to get a fine crystalline limestone sold as 'marble', but the stone's hardness and fractures make it unprofitable.
5. 1881 — A rail line connecting Springfield, Ohio, to Indianapolis, Indiana, was built through Ludlow Falls.
6. 1883 — A post office named Ludlow Falls is first recorded, 1883 to 1896; it reopens in 1906 and is still open, after an earlier Ludlow office (1852-1906).
7. 1909 — The centennial history calls Ludlow Falls a picturesque hamlet near the cascade, in Union Township, and notes that the Friends' Union meeting has been moved there.
8. 1949 — Local Boy Scouts strung the first string of lights over the State Route 48 bridge at the falls, beginning the village's annual holiday lighting tradition (some records give 1950).
9. 1953 — The Ludlow Falls Fire Department took over running the annual lighting of the falls.
10. 1976 — The Springfield-to-Indianapolis rail line through the village, by then carrying little traffic, was abandoned on March 31.
11. 1976 — The Benjamin Iddings Log House, on the grounds of what is now the Brukner Nature Center near Ludlow Falls, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Stories

Lighting the falls

Ludlow Falls takes its name from the 15-foot drop on Ludlow Creek that runs under the State Route 48 bridge in the middle of the village, itself named for surveyor Israel Ludlow, who helped lay out Cincinnati and Dayton after the Revolutionary War. In the years around 1949 and 1950, local Boy Scouts strung a single string of lights over the bridge at the falls for the holidays. What began as a scout project grew into a village tradition; by 1953 the volunteer Ludlow Falls Fire Department had taken over running the display, and the lighting of the falls continues as the village's best-known event.

The oldest house in the county

A short distance from the village, on land that is now the Brukner Nature Center, Benjamin Iddings and his wife Phebe built a two-story hewn-log house in 1804 after bringing their family up the Stillwater River into Newton Township. The house is unusual for a frontier log building in having both a basement and an upstairs fireplace, and it survives today as the oldest documented building standing in Miami County, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.

The Quaker township

Union Township, where Ludlow Falls lies, was settled in the first years of the 1800s by Friends who arrived from the Carolinas and Georgia, part of a migration that, the 1880 county historian wrote, drained Friends' meetings in the Carolinas; the township earned the nickname Quaker Township. In 1802 Caleb Mendenhall brought his family from North Carolina and the first Friends' meetings were held at his cabin. In December 1806 the Friends asked the Redstone quarterly meeting in Pennsylvania for a monthly meeting, and in June 1812 a quarterly meeting was granted for the West Branch church, so that the Friends set up the first religious societies in the county. The Union meeting later moved to Ludlow Falls itself, and the Coppock family, who entered land near the falls in 1804, are buried in the Friends' East Union Cemetery.

Photographs

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · thislocallife.com · commons.wikimedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · thislocallife.com · archive.org · archive.org · postalhistory.com

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

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 2024-11-07

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