Salt Lick Township, Perry County

How Salt Lick Township, Perry County began

Salt Lick Township, in southern Perry County, was settled in 1815 by the Hazleton family, organized about 1823, and named for a salt-water deer lick near the present McCuneville where, about 1826-29, a salt works was built. It holds the village of Shawnee, laid out in 1872 by T. J. Davis when the Newark, Somerset & Straitsville Railroad reached the 'great vein' of coal, McCuneville (laid out 1873), and Hemlock. In the Civil War it raised the first three-year company in the county and was the only township in Perry County that never needed a draft. A trail with a recorded Shawnee village on the site of Shawnee runs through it. New Lexington, the county seat, lies in neighboring Pike Township, not in Salt Lick.

Settled 1815 (John Hazleton Sr. and Jr., Henry, William and Joseph Hazleton, Henry Rush, William Bailey), platted Shawnee 1872 (T. J. Davis); McCuneville 1873 (Frank, John W. and John McCune), incorporated organized as a township about 1823, by John Hazleton and others.

Where the name comes from

Named for a salt-water deer lick near where the town of McCuneville was later built, which the pioneers called the saltlick; the 1883 county history spells the township 'Saltlick.' It was organized about 1823. Salt Lick is the only township of that name in Ohio.

Before the town

The 1902 county history by Martzolff records a Shawnee trail through this township. The Shawnee Run Trail, one of several 'loops' off the main Monongahela Trail that linked the Shawnee towns on the Scioto to the Monongahela Valley, came from the Sunday Creek country south of Corning, went up Indian Creek through Monroe Township by way of Buckingham and Hemlock, and passed through a low gap to Shawnee, 'where they had a village'; the stream is still Shawnee Run, and Martzolff says the town and stream 'stand as monuments to the redman.' The route was chosen for the saltlick at McCuneville, where deer and buffalo came to lick salt and Indians followed them both for the game and for salt of their own; the trail then crossed the ridge to Salt Run and another lick in Mondaycreek Township, where a rock 'hominy-mill' with a conical hole for cracking corn could still be seen. The earlier 1883 county history, by contrast, says there is no history or tradition of any permanent Indian town in Perry County, only temporary camps, and names the Shawnee, Delaware (Lenape) and Wyandot as the occupants of the county in general. The site-specific Shawnee village at Shawnee therefore rests on the 1902 account alone.

Nations recorded here: Shawnee.

• Shawnee Run Trail and Shawnee village site (trail) — Indian Creek to Hemlock to the gap at Shawnee, then north to McCuneville, before settlement; village reported on the site of Shawnee (archive.org)
• McCuneville saltlick (other) — McCuneville, two miles north of Shawnee, deer and buffalo lick used by Indian hunters; later salt works c. 1826-29 and 1873-74 (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1815 — The Hazleton family (John Sr., John Jr., Henry, William and Joseph) and Henry Rush and William Bailey settle in what becomes Salt Lick Township.
2. c. 1820 — A Baptist congregation is organized and a church built on John Hazleton's land half a mile south of the later McCuneville, older than the Baptist church at New Lexington.
3. 1823 — Salt Lick Township was organized in southern Perry County, taking its name from mineral licks within its bounds.
4. c. 1826 — A salt works is built at the deer lick on the later site of McCuneville; it runs with profit for a few years, then fails as the price of salt falls, and only its stone chimney remains for about 45 years.
5. 1835 — Straitsville (later Old Straitsville, now in Coal Township) is laid out by Jacob and Isaac Strait while still part of Salt Lick Township.
6. 1856 — Salt Lick gives John C. Frémont a majority of 83 over Buchanan for President.
7. c. 1861 — Salt Lick raises the first three-year company in Perry County for the Civil War, which organizes at Old Straitsville, then in the township; the township later becomes the only one in the county where no draft is needed.
8. 1870-09-09 — A powder keg explodes in a store at Sulphur Springs in the east of the township, killing Lewis McDonald, George Gaver (owner of the Lyons mill), a three-year-old and a ten-year-old boy.
9. 1872 — The railroad reached the future site of Shawnee inside the township, and the coal, clay, and oil boom that built the village began.
10. 1872 — Hemlock, in the township's southeast corner, was formally established (after earlier settlement as Coaldale in 1869).
11. 1873 — McCuneville is laid out by Frank, John W. and John McCune on the railroad two miles north of Shawnee, and large salt works are built there in 1873-74.
12. 1876-12 — Captain Sam Lyons, owner of the Lyons mill, dies in a fire that destroys Thomas Hughes's saloon in Shawnee.
13. 1880 — Shawnee has 2,770 people, four furnaces, several large coal works, two hotels, five churches and a union school; its terminus is the Newark, Somerset & Straitsville Railroad.
14. 1951 — The McCuneville post office, open since 1872, is discontinued.

Stories

One township, two coal villages, and a shared saltlick

Salt Lick Township took its name from the mineral licks within its borders, where the settlers found a salt-water deer lick at the later site of McCuneville. The township was organized about 1823. Shawnee, near its center, was platted by T. J. Davis in 1872 when the railroad reached the site, and Wikipedia credits coal, clay and oil discoveries with its boom; the village counted 3,266 residents in 1890. Hemlock, in the southeast corner, was first settled as Coaldale in 1869 and established as Hemlock in 1872. Shawnee had fallen to 505 residents and Hemlock to 142 by 2020, and the whole township counted 1,090.

Powder at Sulphur Springs, 1870

On the evening of September 9, 1870, Lewis McDonald's little brick country store at Sulphur Springs, in the east of Salt Lick Township, blew up. George Gaver, who owned the flour mill there that was known as the Lyons Mill, had been buying rock powder and doubted its quality; he held a match to a pinch in the palm of his hand and it did not catch. McDonald said that was no fair test, took some from a hole in a keg, set it on a chair and lit it. The keg went off, and the store was in ruins with McDonald, Gaver and George W. Gordon burned and buried in the wreckage. McDonald and Gaver died within hours. McDonald's three-year-old son, who had been playing at the door, was found under the debris the next morning, and a ten-year-old neighbor boy, blown clear of the store with his clothes afire, jumped into the creek, and a passing woman pulled him out, but he lived only a few minutes. The 1883 county history called the funeral the largest ever held in the county, and added that a fatality seemed to follow the place: two boiler explosions soon hurt people at Lyons Mill, and in 1876 its owner, Captain Sam Lyons, burned to death in a Shawnee saloon.

The Township That Never Needed a Draft

Salt Lick was a hunter's township in its early days, with deer, bear, wolves and panthers, and hunters from the north of the county came for weeks at a time to wait for deer at the salt lick near McCuneville. The county's 1883 history says the Democratic township voted overwhelmingly Democratic until the Whig party broke up, and then was as strongly Republican, giving Frémont a majority of 83 in 1856. When the Civil War came, Salt Lick raised the county's first three-year company, which gathered at Old Straitsville, then inside its borders. It was also the only township in Perry County in which no draft was ever made: it stayed ahead of its quota on every call and never paid a dollar of local bounty, a distinction the 1883 historian says only a very few precincts in Ohio shared.

Salt From the Deer Lick

The township took its name from a spring of salt water near the later site of McCuneville, where deer and buffalo came to lick; Indian hunters had used the lick before the settlers, and the settlers' hunters hid near it to shoot deer by day and, as the deer grew shy, by the sound of their drinking at night. About 1826, according to the county history's chapter on resources, or about 1829, according to its township chapter, a company erected a salt works there that made good salt for several years. It failed as the price fell and larger works opened elsewhere, and everything was razed or burned except a tall stone chimney that stood for forty-five years. In 1873 and 1874 the McCune family built large new salt works beside the railroad they had just platted McCuneville on; those also proved unprofitable and were torn down.

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

Six wells (4 MGD combined) in a sand-and-gravel aquifer in the Hocking River Buried Valley aquifer system, Dover Township, Athens County (2025 CCR). Ohio EPA's May 2012 source water assessment rates the source highly susceptible to contamination (thin clay cover, aquifer less than 20 ft deep). The water here

• Shawnee, Village Of44% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• New Lexington31% of residentsNew Lexington Reservoir(s) (Old & New Reservoir)
• Corning, Village Of9% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• Southern Perry Co-hemlock4% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• New Straitsville, Village Of4% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• Southern Perry Co-buckingham3% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• Southern Perry Co-congo2% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• Portersville East Branch Water Co.1% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• Southern Perry Co-mainesville1% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• Oakdale Water District1% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• Old Straitsville Water Association0% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)
• Northern Perry Co.water #20% of residentsHocking River Buried Valley Aquifer (wells)

Bridges rated poor (1)

Facilities reporting toxic releases (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (1)

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Basic Audit, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-07-29

Statewide question: State Issue 3: Voter ID

Local questions for Salt Lick Township, Perry County, Perry County and its school district:

• Perry County: Renews a 1-mill property tax levy to maintain & operate county home of Perry County for 5 years, beginning in 2026.

Races, candidates and every question for an address: your ballot. County offices and judges are on your county board's sample ballot.

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