Walnut Township, Fairfield County

How Walnut Township, Fairfield County began

Walnut Township, in the northeastern corner of Fairfield County, was organized in 1807 and named for the walnut timber that once covered it; low, wet ground along Big and Little Walnut Creeks made it slower to settle than most of the county. Its history was shaped by the Ohio Canal, completed through the township by 1833, and by the Licking Reservoir the canal required, an impoundment of a swamp the pioneers called Buffalo Lick that the legislature renamed Buckeye Lake in 1894. Millersport, Monticello (long since vanished), New Salem and a village that passed through the names Bush City, Hadley Junction and finally Thurston all grew up along the canal and the railroads that followed it. Today the township holds part of Buckeye Lake village, the Fairfield Beach community, and the lake itself, now a state park with a rebuilt dam.

Settled 1800, incorporated 1807 (township organized), by William Murphy (first settler); township named for its walnut timber.

Where the name comes from

The township was probably so named because of the abundance of walnut timber growing in its forests when it was first settled, according to the 1883 county history; it remained well timbered with sugar, beech, walnut, hickory and mulberry at the time of writing.

Before the town

The celebrated Refugee Tract, a strip of land the United States government set aside for Canadians and Nova Scotians who had aided the American cause in the Revolutionary War, crosses the entire northern part of Walnut township, about six miles long and two miles wide. Before its waters were dammed, the ground that became the Licking Reservoir and later Buckeye Lake was a great swamp the pioneers called Buffalo Lick, described as early as the 1750s in the captivity narrative of Colonel James Smith; the main Indian trails between the Ohio River and the Miami towns to the west passed by this swamp, making the area a natural crossing point long before the canal engineers arrived. William Murphy, the township's first white settler in 1800, traded extensively with Indians in the area, exchanging flour and meal for skins and furs, which he packed back to Virginia to sell. No source consulted names a specific village, mound or treaty line within Walnut township itself beyond this trail and swamp.

Nations recorded here: Wyandot, Miami.

• Buffalo Lick (later the Licking Reservoir and Buckeye Lake) (trail) — the low ground in the northern part of Walnut township now covered by Buckeye Lake, described from the 1750s onward, precontact use undated (en.wikipedia.org)
• Refugee Tract (other) — a strip about six miles long and two miles wide crossing the northern part of Walnut township, surveyed after 1795, not itself a Native site but land ceded under the Treaty of Greenville (archive.org)

Timeline

1. 1800 — William Murphy, from Virginia, becomes about the first white settler in Walnut township, locating near the future site of Millersport; a noted hunter, he also trades flour and meal to Indians in exchange for furs.
2. 1807 — Walnut Township is organized and named for its walnut timber.
3. 1825 — Mathias Miller lays out Millersport on the line of the future Ohio Canal; about the same time a second village, Monticello, is started roughly half a mile southwest, near the canal.
4. 1826-1830 — A dike is built across the South Fork of the Licking River to create the Licking Reservoir, a feeder for the Ohio and Erie Canal, flooding the swamp long known as Buffalo Lick.
5. 1832 — Abram Hashbarger lays out the village of New Salem in the southeast part of the township.
6. 1833 — The Ohio Canal is completed through the township; the Licking Reservoir, entirely within Walnut township on the Fairfield County side, becomes a popular resort for fishing, boating and duck hunting even as it still serves the canal.
7. 1835-1847 — Monticello does ten or twelve years of business near the canal before fading; by 1883 hardly a vestige of it remains and the site is farmland, matching a historical place name later recorded for the area.
8. 1881 — George W. Bush lays out a village at a railroad junction, first named Bush City in his honor; the 1883 county history records it renamed Hadley Junction by railroad officials, while a 1912 county history's list of stations and modern sources instead give the village's later name as Thurston, also platted in 1881.
9. 1894 — The Ohio State Legislature renames the Licking Reservoir 'Buckeye Lake.'
10. 1949 — Buckeye Lake is designated a state park.
11. 1978 — The Henry Musser House, southeast of Baltimore on Millersport Road, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
12. 2015-2018 — An Army Corps of Engineers inspection finds the Buckeye Lake dam in danger of failure; the state funds a $107 million rebuild, completed and marked with a ribbon-cutting on November 8, 2018.

Stories

The Hunter Who Settled First

William Murphy came into Walnut township from Virginia around 1800 and took up land in the northern part of the township near where Millersport would later stand, making him, by the 1883 county history's account, about the first white settler in a township so low and swampy that it filled up more slowly than any other in the county. Murphy was a celebrated hunter even by frontier standards, credited with killing one panther, sixty-three wolves and large numbers of deer, wild turkeys, coons and foxes over his years there. He also traded steadily with the Indians who still moved through the area, exchanging flour, meal and other goods for skins and furs, which he packed all the way back to Virginia to sell at a profit substantial enough to make him a wealthy man; his descendants still lived near Millersport when the county history was written.

Monticello, the Village That Became a Cornfield

About 1825, at the same time Mathias Miller was laying out Millersport, another village called Monticello was started perhaps half a mile to the southwest, close by the new Ohio Canal. For ten or twelve years it did a real business of its own, but when the county history was compiled in 1883 the writer could report that hardly a vestige of it remained; the site of the once-flourishing village had simply become fields of grain. A separate firsthand account preserved from a Basil butcher who hauled beef there by the wagonload during the canal's construction agreed: 'Monticello is a cornfield.' Its name survives only as a historical footnote on the map of a township that swallowed it whole.

From Buffalo Lick to Buckeye Lake

Long before it was a lake, the low ground in the north of Walnut township was a great swamp the pioneers called Buffalo Lick, known well enough by the 1750s that a captive of the Wyandot, Colonel James Smith, described it in his published account of his years among them; the main Indian trails linking the Ohio River to the Miami towns to the west passed directly by it. Between 1826 and 1830 canal engineers threw a dike across the South Fork of the Licking River to flood the swamp and store water for the Ohio and Erie Canal, creating what settlers called the Licking Reservoir, all of it on the Fairfield County side lying within Walnut township. The Ohio Legislature renamed it Buckeye Lake in 1894, and as the canal era faded the lake's second life as a resort town, amusement park and eventually a state park began, culminating in a $107 million dam rebuild finished in 2018 after engineers warned the aging structure was at risk of failing outright.

Photographs

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

Every historic place in Fairfield County on the full map

Mostly private wells The water here

• Millersport Village39% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)
• Pleasantville Village19% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Baltimore Village13% of residentsGroundwater wells (3 wells)
• Thornville, Village Of9% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Northern Perry Co.water #19% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Buckeye Lake, Village Of8% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)
• Licking County Harbor Hills3% of residentsGroundwater wells (4 wells)
• Thurston Village0% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Roberts Trailer Park0% of residentsGroundwater wells (1 wells)

Nursing homes (1)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Bridges rated poor (2)

Facilities reporting toxic releases (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (5)

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• Financial Audit, 2022 to 2023, released 2024-12-24

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