Miami Township, Greene County

• 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.

How Miami Township, Greene County began

Miami Township was formed on June 8, 1808, out of Bath and Xenia townships, and was named for the Little Miami River that runs through it, itself named for the Miami people who once held the region. Lewis Davis, who settled near the yellow spring at the heart of the future village of Yellow Springs in 1799, is remembered as the township's first white settler. The township grew up around the spring that the Shawnee had long known as a landmark on the trail between two of their towns, and later around Antioch College, founded in 1850 with Horace Mann as its first president, and around Clifton's early mills. Today it holds about 4,900 people, most of them in Yellow Springs.

Settled 1799, incorporated June 8, 1808, by Lewis Davis (first settler); organized from Bath and Xenia townships.

Where the name comes from

Named for the Little Miami River, which in turn was named for the Miami people who had held the region before the Shawnee, Wyandot and other nations that early Ohio settlers actually encountered there.

Before the town

Miami Township holds a specific piece of Native American landscape memory: the yellow spring itself, at the center of what became Yellow Springs village, lay on a trail connecting two Shawnee towns, Oldtown (Old Chillicothe/Chalahgawatha), about five miles south near present Xenia, and a Mad River village about six miles north where Tecumseh was born in 1768. The 1908 county history records that this trail was still plainly visible to the township's earliest white settlers, who found the spring already a known landmark rather than a blank spot on the map. No mound or earthwork within the township's own boundaries was found in the sources checked, though the county overall had at least forty-one recorded earthworks by 1908.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee, Miami.

• Trail between Oldtown and the Mad River village (Yellow Springs) (trail) — passing the yellow spring, Miami Township, historic Shawnee, pre-1800 (ohiogenealogyexpress.com)

Timeline

1. 1799 — Lewis Davis, remembered as the first white settler in what becomes the township, builds a cabin near the yellow spring and surveys the surrounding land.
2. 1808 — Miami Township is organized from Bath and Xenia townships.
3. 1833 — Robert Watson, Timothy Bates and Bennett Lewis establish Clifton, which becomes the oldest town in the township, reaching about 300 residents.
4. 1852 — Antioch College is chartered in Yellow Springs, opening its doors that year as one of the first American colleges both nonsectarian and fully coeducational.
5. 1853 — Judge William Mills surveys 350 acres for the village of Yellow Springs and is considered its founder; Horace Mann becomes Antioch's first president that same year.
6. 1856 — Yellow Springs incorporates as a village.
7. 1896 — Businessman John Bryan purchases 335 acres along Clifton Gorge, calling the land Riverside Farm; it later becomes John Bryan State Park.

Stories

The spring on the trail between two Shawnee towns

Long before Lewis Davis built his cabin there in 1799, the yellow spring that gives Yellow Springs its name was already a known point on the map, not a discovery. It sat roughly midway on a trail connecting two Shawnee towns: Oldtown, about five miles south near what became Xenia, and a Mad River village about six miles north, remembered as Tecumseh's birthplace. The 1908 county history notes the trail was still plainly visible to the area's first white settlers, meaning the path Davis and his neighbors used to reach the spring was, in a real sense, inherited rather than cut new.

Horace Mann's college by the spring

When Antioch College opened its doors in Yellow Springs in 1852, it broke sharply with the norms of American higher education: it admitted men and women alike from the start and had no religious sect controlling it, at a time when almost no other American college did either. Its first president, Horace Mann, already famous as the architect of American public education and a well-known abolitionist, took the job in 1853 believing an educated citizenry was the foundation of a working democracy. He led the college until his death in 1859, and the small Greene County village his college was built around never quite lost the reforming, unconventional character he gave it.

Local history sources: ohiogenealogyexpress.com · en.wikipedia.org · antioch.edu · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org

Every historic place in Greene County on the full map

Groundwater wells (4 wells) The water here

• Yellow Springs Village77% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)
• Cedarville University23% of residentsGroundwater wells (8 wells)
• Greene County - northwest Reg Water0% of residentsLittle Miami River Buried Valley Aquifer (2 wellfields, Beavercreek area)

Bridges rated poor (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (1)

Money issues on the ballot since 2020: 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 2024-12-24

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