Portage

How Portage began

Portage takes its name from the Portage River, whose own name records a Native practice: canoeing parties, including Ottawa travelers, carried their canoes and cargo overland around obstructions in the river, a portage in the old fur-trade sense. Long before the village existed, the site was already notable: the county's own history names Collister Haskins, who first settled in neighboring Liberty Township in 1824 before establishing a trading post at Portage, as the only settler anywhere between Findlay and the Maumee settlement prior to 1828. Appointed postmaster in January 1829, Haskins built the settlement's first cabin, store and school building, and had the village itself formally platted in April 1836; it incorporated in 1857.

Settled 1829, when Collister Haskins built a log trading house west of the present Main Street, platted April 1836, surveyed by Neptune Nearing for Collister Haskins, incorporated village, 1857, by Collister Haskins.

Where the name comes from

The village takes its name from the nearby Portage River, itself named -- per the county's own 1897 history -- for the portages, or carrying-places, that canoeing travelers used along it to bypass obstructions in the river.

Before the town

The Portage River, for which this village is named, preserves a Native travel practice in its own name: Ottawa and other canoeing parties carried their canoes and cargo overland, or portaged, around obstructions in the river as they moved between the Maumee and the Sandusky country. No mound, earthwork or named Native village specific to the village site was found in any source consulted; the county's own 1897 history states that no such evidence exists anywhere in Wood County. A Beaver Creek-to-Portage travel trail is recorded near this area.

Nations recorded here: Ottawa.

Timeline

1. 1824-07 to 1824-09 — Collister Haskins buys the northeast quarter of Section 12 in Liberty Township and builds a cabin there in September, with neighbors from Miltonville and Waterville helping; at the time, mail reached the area only once every two weeks.
2. 1828 (before) — Collister Haskins, at Portage, is recorded as the only settler anywhere between Findlay and the Maumee settlement.
3. 1829-01-29 — Collister Haskins is appointed postmaster of Portage, a post he holds for eighteen years, after petitioning for a post office the year before; he builds a log trading house near his cabin, stocked with goods for both Native and white customers.
4. 1833 — Haskins builds a log cabin on the future village site for his hired man, English; the Lee Moore family shelters there that fall, and it serves as the first school south of Bowling Green starting in 1835.
5. 1836-04 — Haskins has the eastern half of the present village surveyed by Neptune Nearing; he lives there until his death on May 7, 1872.
6. 1844 — John H. DeWitt marries Wealthy Haskins and builds a frame house next to the 1833 cabin, then tears down the cabin -- the first human habitation on the village site.
7. 1857 — Portage is incorporated as a village.
8. 1886 (approx.) — A gas well drilled by R. W. McMahan at Portage is completed, its supply estimated at 2,000,000 cubic feet a day, during the peak of the county's natural gas boom.

Stories

The only settler for miles

Before 1828, the site of Portage held, by the county's own account, the only settler anywhere in the vast stretch of country between Findlay and the Maumee River settlement: Collister Haskins, whose name would later be given to a separate village elsewhere in the county. The isolation was no accident -- the interior of Wood County lay inside the Great Black Swamp, and settlers who came at all clustered along the river rather than risk the wet, roadless country further in. Portage's own post office opened by 1829, still years before the town itself was formally laid out in 1836, a reminder that mail service, not a survey plat, was often the first sign of permanent settlement in the swamp interior.

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · archive.org

Mostly private wells The water here

• Northwestern W and SD - Portage100% of residentsMaumee River (via Bowling Green Reservoir)

Spills reported since 2021 (1)

Ballot issues

Elections for office

Winners in bold. Results from the county board of elections' official canvass unless marked.

Auditor of State record

• Fiscal emergency: declared 2009-04-08, released 2017-10-02. source
• Agreed Upon Procedures, 2022 to 2023, released 2024-10-01

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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