Old AlexandriaGranville and Fickleness
Fradrick Blood was thrilled when the Granville Feeder was completed. The Davisons and Watsons were able to make the trip from Yorkshire, England, to Newark, Ohio, almost entirely on a ship. In their journey, they had a 15-mile overland trip to get around Niagra Falls before boarding another ship. People in Alexandria and Granville knew this.
When plans for the Ohio Canal were made and the businessmen of Granville heard of them, they wanted direct access to the Canal. In time, a plan was developed to build the Granville Feeder. This feeder canal linked the Raccoon Creek as it runs south of Granville to the main canal south of Heath - then called Lockport - approximately where the feeder from the then new Buckeye Lake feed into the canal. Along the way, a bridge was built to carry the Feeder over Ramp Creek and an arch bridge - the Showman Bridge - was built over Raccoon Creek before the canal crossed Cherry Valley and tied into the Raccoon Creek southeast of Granville. The Showman Arch Bridge still stands, it is the bridge on Cherry Valley Road that crosses the creek. The Raccoon was widened south of Granville and dams built to create a turning basin for canal boats. Granville finally had access to the world.
One of the earlier businesses of Granville was Munson's Furnace. Iron ore had been found in the area and Munson build a furnace to refine the ore and pour castings. Munson's cast iron cookware was especially popular in the area then. With the Granville Feeder, Munson's Cookware could be sold world-wide. Munson had a daughter, named Jerusha, who married Elias Fassett. Fassett became involved with the Central Ohio Railroad as a land purchasing agent. His job was to buy rights-of-way for the new Central Ohio Railroad (CORR) as they made their way across central Ohio.
Started in Zanesville, the CORR was originally intended to link to the Ohio River at Wheeling. Meanwhile, another railroad ran from Pittsburgh to Wheeling. It became apparent that they could do much more than that and soon began laying rail into central Ohio. The railroad went through Black Hand Gorge and followed the approximate route of the canal as it entered Newark. At Newark, the railroad connected with the B&O, which ran north along Mt Vernon Avenue, and continued west out of town. The tracks curved southwest and crossed Lancaster Road a few miles south of Granville at Union before heading to Outville (Kirkersville Station), Pataskala, Summit, and into Columbus Depot. Among railroaders, this is known as the Panhandle Route.
This served as a point of aggravation to Granville businesses. Once again, vital transportation had managed to by-pass them. To make matters worse, the route was developed by a local resident. Fassett even went so far as to make his home on a bluff south of Granville complete with a widow's walk so he could watch his trains pass. In what must have been seen as providence or irony by some, Fassett died on that widow's walk of a sudden heart attack. Following his death, rumors spread about how Fasset had made some under the table transactions to gain what we remember now as Bryn Mawr.
Even a spur into Granville would have been cost-prohibitive. With the canal, you simply had to dig a ditch, widen the Raccoon, build a dam, and make a turning basin. A railroad would require a turntable, engine house, yard, coal dock, and water tank - expensive at the time. The Granville Spur did not happen.
One Granville entrepreneur was able to make a modest income from the railroad. A hack would transport you and your baggage from Granville to Union Station for the modest fee of 50-cents. Fifty cents, in those days, would pay for a generous dinner of the finest food. Since many of the people taking the train were associated with Denison University - student and faculty - thrift was in order and walking the three or four miles to Granville became a necessity. It is said a path was worn across the back of the old County Home property as travelers were able to cut a half-mile off their walk as they left Union.
By the 1880s, Granville got what it wanted. The Toledo & Ohio Central entered Licking County from Centerburg to Croton (Hartford), Johnstown, Alexandria, Clemons, then Granville. From Granville, the railroad made an easy right to cross the Cherry Valley on its way to Central City. Today we know Central City as the area of Cherry Valley Road surrounding the Market Basket. From Central City the railroad ran to Thurston and into southeast Ohio.
At Granville, the T&OC served several facilities. Munson's Furnace and Louis Fassett were long gone. Granville embraced to T&OC and in return, the T&OC had multiple sidings to serve the usual grain elevator, lumber yard, warehouse, and coal yard. Additionally, there was a planing mill, the water department, and a grist mill to be served. At Central City, goods could be transferred to the CORR, usually the Pennsylvania Railroad, and sent east or west. Granville businessmen would certainly have thought themselves to be 'on the map.'
Even Alexandria was nicely accommodated by the T&OC with a siding, a coal yard, lumber yard, grainery, corn bin, and warehouse. Residents of Alexandria had access to passenger and freight service as well as a telegraph office.
In the last years of the 19th Century, a new invention, the first of its kind, connected Granville to Newark with service starting on December 28, 1889. By now, Granville merchants did not want it. It would be a relatively short-lived phenomena we know as the Interurban. Granvile's merchants liked their business. To them, the interurban would whisk people, and with it sales and profits, to Newark. In their opinion, the interurban would cause Newark to grow and Granville to languish.
The interurban was not the railroad. It was a single car powered by electric motors. The Newark & Granville Electric Street Railway, later known as the Columbus, Buckeye Lake & Newark Traction Company, then the Columbus, Newark, & Zanesville Electric Railway, built a modern powerplant in Hebron to serve their needs. These cars were primarily involved in passenger service, although most would carry local freight. most cars tended to be around 50 to 60 feet long and ran on the same type of track the railroad uses - rails at 4 feet 8-1/2 inches apart. Most ran an overhead power line - a catenary - which the car accessed through a pole mounted on the roof. These cars, over good tracks, were capable of rapid acceleration and high speeds. Today, the modern equivalent is called Light Rail.
Eventually, the Interurban fell to the automobile, but not without a struggle. The Interurbans often began as small, privately held companies that quickly became public companies and began a series of buy-outs and mergers that resulted in at least a regional network of fast transportation. On some Interurbans, speeds over 60 MPH were obtained. It was quite possible, in the 1920s to take an interurban from Granville and see relatives who had moved on to Indiana and Illinois.
The interurbans made travel easy. Long time St. Albans resident Dorothea Lynd, who grew up in Kirkersville, had a dilemma when she transferred at Hebron. Her mother would give her the interurban fare and send her Newark to obtain something the family business needed but was always tempted to transfer to the interurban car to Buckeye Lake for recreation.
The popularity of the automobile placed the governments in a position to improve roads from dirt trails suitable for wagons to smooth, often paved, roads suitable for the cars of the day. The Interurban companies saw government investment in highways - without compensitory investment in the Interurban - as unfair competion. By the 1930s, the Interurbans fell.
The railroads saw good and bad in this. The automobile was still not a viable alternative for long-distance travel. While interurbans took much of the financial burden of unprofitable local passenger service away from the railroads, the railroads emphasized new, state-of-the-art long-distance passenger service. Express trains with names like the Spirit of St. Louis - named after Lindbergh's Trans-Atlantic Flight, The Penn-Texas, The Cincinnati Limited, The Indianapolis Limited, and The American, all leaving New York City, passed south of Granville. Many World War II veterans remember these trains as the trains they rode when they came home from war to family and friends waiting for them in Newark.
Life-long resident of St Albans, Ed Hankinson, recalls that in the 1950s, State Route 161 was a seldom traveled gravel road. In the late 1950s, the Ohio Department of Transportaion (ODOT) improved the road and made it a two-lane highway. At the time, ODOT purchased sufficient righ-of way to make it a four-lane highway. I recall seeing giant shovels tearing through the hill at Dugway to build a four-lane highway, the Newark Expressway. The once popular Delaware Road, which passed through downtown Granville, split at White Point to become the Delaware Road and Worthington Road, was now circumvented by the then new '161.' The Delaware Road portion then entered Alexandria as Granville Street before going through downtown Alexandria to Johnstown. My earliest memories of traveling to Newark took us down this old route. Now, Alexandria and Granville are exits from the expressway that connects to the Interstate system in northeast Columbus and leads to Newark and beyond.
The passing of the T&OC through Granville made the Granville Feeder obsolete, and the feeder was filled in at Granville by 1880. Trains stopped running through Alexandria sometime in the early 1970s, probably due to multiple washouts of the track bed into Reese's field near Northridge Road. Passenger service along the Panhandle Route was over about the same time; the airlines were hauling passengers now. To get to Newark from Alexandria, you get on State Route 161, officially State Route 37, and travel at speeds unimaginable to Jerusha Munson while her father poured iron into sand molds to make skillets... but you still have to wait for the light to change in Alex.
A canal boat on the Erie Canal. The Davisons and Watsons would have come to Newark on a boat like this.
T&OC passenger train arrives in Alexandria. The photo would have been taken around 8 AM. The train is heading east. Notice the absence of trees - this location is now canopied with trees.
The Interurban crosses a creek near Kirkersville. US 40, the Old National Road, is on the right. In towns, the interurban tracks would run down the center of US 40 creating what would be considered something quite unsafe today.
Showman Arch Bridge as it crosses Raccoon Creek. The canal is long gone, replaced by Cherry Valley Road. The bridge got the name Showman Arch Bridge because it was next to the Showman Farm, had arches, and was a bridge.
A 50-foot interurban passenger car in Newark. Notice the pole on the top that carries electric power from an overhead wire to the motors. This car is traveling away from us. The interurban also ran 'Combines' that had a baggage compartment at the front and would carry local freight. One popular item of freight was milk. The interurban would stop at farms to pick up milk, eggs, and other farm perishables.
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