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Archiver > OHCLERMO > 2000-03 > 0952703506


From: HERMON B FAGLEY <>
Subject: History of mid-Clermont's Lake Harsha-East Fork State Park.
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 10:51:46 -0500


In the pioneer days, there were 'neighborhoods' smaller than the later
general store-
post office hamlets. Water powered grist and saw mills, and adjoining
stills were most
important. When the water-power failed as the swamps up-creek were
drained, villages
built up on more level topography.
1970+,the federal Corps of engineers bought land for "flood control" Lake
Harsha, on the
East Fork of the Little Miami,where Batavia,Tate,and Williamsburg
Townships adjoined.
Ohio State bought lands for East Fork State Park around Lake Harsha. A
modern map will
show you Lake Harsha as roughly an hourglass, with feeder creeeks from
the east flooded.
The western bulge was the 'ELK LICK' neighborhood,or hamlet. John Collins
and James Blackman
built mills 1815. The eastern bulge came to be called the 'TWIN BRIDGES"
neighborhood. In between,at
what is now the Tate boat dock,was Isaac Higbee's-Cornelius
McCollum's,Grant Snider's mill.
A freak of nature caused a natural mile long ridge,-the old Slade-Rose
farm,- to be included with
a modern cement dam of a few hundred feet, to make a dam,that backed a
main pool over
a mile wide.In this western,ELK LICK, BULDGE,TODAY,is an island. The top
of that island-hill,was
the Batavia twnsp 1 room school site.
Lake Harsha flooded many water-powered mill sites. On Poplar Creek,at
Macedonia 'neighborhood'
Rd was 3 sets of mills DENHAM,BURKE,GREGOR,DEEL,SPRAGUE,DAVISwere some of
the owners. . At Bethel-Concord Rd -'Goggle Eye" neighborhood,was
Zachariah Riley's
mills site,and east was Peter Light's-Wm Smith's. Just north of Goggle
Eye was 'SHANGHI RIDGE"
neighborhood. On Sugartree Creek was Thomas Page's saw mill.
On the upper reaches of Lake Harsha was TUNNEL MILL- my wife's
grandfather tore
it down to built his barn. Just beyond the upper reaches of LAKE
HARSHA,was Wm
Lytle's mill in Williamsburg.
John Conover had a thunder-gust saw mill on Corker's Run,of Ullrey's.
I've named 9 water-powered mill sites on the lands bought by the Federal
government.
Likely were more. And 2 salt works-1 at ELK LICK,and 1 n Concord
neighborhood church.
1 gold mine.
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