Meigs Township, Muskingum County

• The WildsThe Wilds is a nonprofit conservation center of nearly 10,000 acres on strip-mined land in Muskingum County. It was founded in 1984 and opened to tours in 1994.

How Meigs Township, Muskingum County began

Meigs Township lies in the southeastern corner of Muskingum County, a 37.5-square-mile township named for Meigs Creek, which itself honors Return Jonathan Meigs, Jr., Ohio's fourth governor. Settled by the 1810s and organized in 1819, the township once held several small villages -- Meigsville (Young Hickory), Zeno, High Hill -- that grew up around post offices, stores, and mills. Population peaked near 1,547 residents in 1860 and has fallen steadily since, especially after large-scale strip mining in the 1960s reshaped much of the land. No incorporated village remains within the township today.

Incorporated 1819 (organized as a township, split off from Rich Hill Township), by first township officers Zoath and John Hammond, Llewelyn Pierce, and Jacob Wortman; Finley Collins and the Gillogly family credited as first white settlers.

Where the name comes from

The township takes its name from Meigs Creek, a tributary of the Muskingum River, which was in turn named for Return Jonathan Meigs, Jr. -- Ohio's first chief justice, a U.S. Senator, and the state's fourth governor.

Before the town

No source found describes a Native village, trail, or mound specifically within Meigs Township's boundaries. At the county level, the Muskingum valley lay within Wyandot and Mingo (Seneca-Cayuga) country in the eighteenth century, with Shawnee to the south along the Scioto; the region passed out of Native hands through the treaties that followed the Treaty of Greenville (1795). Nothing site-specific to Meigs Township was found.

Nations recorded here: Wyandot, Mingo (Seneca-Cayuga), Shawnee.

Timeline

1. 1819 — Meigs Township is organized on July 13, split off from Rich Hill Township; first officers are Zoath and John Hammond, Llewelyn Pierce, and Jacob Wortman.
2. 1820 — The township's population is recorded at 284.
3. 1840 — The settlement of Meigsville is laid out; it is later known as Young Hickory.
4. 1846 — A post office called Young Hickory opens; it operates until 1902.
5. 1850 — By the 1830s-50s the township supports three gristmills and four sawmills; township population reaches roughly 1,495-1,547 at its mid-century peak.
6. 1862 — A post office called Zeno opens in the township, serving a settlement with a country store and a high school; it operates until 1902.
7. 1966-1969 — Bucyrus-Erie builds the Big Muskie dragline for the Central Ohio Coal Company; large-scale strip mining by American Electric Power and Central Ohio Coal in and around Meigs Township follows through the 1960s-70s, and the villages of High Hill, Zeno, and Young Hickory are lost to it.
8. 2020 — The township's population has fallen to 228.

Stories

Three villages the land swallowed

Through the nineteenth century, Meigs Township supported small crossroads settlements built around a post office and a store: Meigsville, laid out in 1840 and later called Young Hickory, got its post office in 1846; Zeno, a few miles off, got its post office in 1862 and grew a country store and a high school. Both post offices closed in 1902 as rural free delivery reached the countryside, but the villages themselves lingered on the map for decades more. It was coal, not the mail, that finally erased them. Starting in the 1960s, American Electric Power and the Central Ohio Coal Company brought large-scale strip mining to the area, running some of the largest excavating machines ever built -- including the Big Muskie dragline, named for the county itself, which in 22 years of work moved twice the earth of the original Panama Canal excavation. High Hill, Zeno, and Young Hickory disappeared under the mining. When the coal was gone, AEP graded and replanted the torn ground, and in 1980 gave 9,000 acres of it to found The Wilds, now one of the largest conservation centers in North America -- rolling reclaimed hills and small lakes standing over the sites of vanished villages.

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · usgenwebsites.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · abandonedonline.net · ohiodnr.gov · en.wikipedia.org

Mostly private wells The water here

• Muskingum County Water - Se98% of residentsMuskingum River buried valley aquifer (wells near Duncan Falls)
• Pleasant City, Village Of2% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

High-hazard dams (1)

Bridges rated poor (1)

Museums, historical societies, gardens and zoos (1)

Shale and injection wells (2)

Spills reported since 2021 (4)

Money issues on the ballot since 2018: 0 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.
• Basic Audit, 2022 to 2023, released 2024-07-23

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