We’ve taken a historical drive on the US 25 Super-Highway.  Weve visited Marianne Country Estates and Outing Park.  Now for the main course, the development out along the “New Troy Pike”, AKA North Dixie Drive, known today as Northridge.  The study area will be the areas immediately along North Dixie Drive.

 

Yeah, today it’s North Dixie.  Back then it was the New Troy Pike.  But where was old Troy Pike? 

 

Before there was Troy there was Staunton, the first settlement in Miami County and seat of the first county court. The first two roads north of Dayton headed up there, following the Great Miami River.  The first road was probably the “River Road”, ancestor to todays Wagner Ford Road.  After statehood the Ohio legislature established a “3% Fund” for roadbuilding, and the Staunton Road was built from that fund. 

 

 

Note there is no National Road yet, no Vandalia and no Englewood.  In fact the central part of Butler Township, along the county line, was still virgin timber, not purchased from the government until 1830s.  Settlement followed better drained lands along the river and stream margins.  The first settlements north were Chambersburg, Union, and Little York.

 

Troy replaced Staunton as the county seat and the road became the “old” Troy Pike.  The New Troy Pike was a more direct route and was probably built (maybe on an older road) during the turnpike boom of the 1830s.  As one can see from this close up there was a number of turnpikes radiating from Dayton, including Frederick Pike to the west and north connecting south central Miami County into Dayton.

 

(the study area outlined in red)

 

 

By the mid 1830s things havn’t changed much, except the Miami & Erie canal has been extended north to Piqua.  One sees the names of the various property owners on this map, some of who would continue farming here until the suburban era.

 

 

By the 1850s Dayton Township has been divided into Harrison, Mad River, and Van Buren townships, and the study area is now in Harrison Twp.  The ancestor of Needmore road appears on this map, as does Shoup Mill Road (and the mill, too, on the Stillwater)

 

 

Note the cluster of Neff’s; John Neff, Ab. Neff, B Neff and Widow Neff.  This family would continue to own land in the area until the time of subdivision.  One of the pioneer Neff houses still stands, hidden away on a deep lot.

 

The 1875 county atlas shows property lines, and one can see some new names, such as Harshman (a major landowner and miller in Mad Rive Township).  By 1860 the Dayton & Michigan Railroad had come through on the eastern edge of the study area, but didn’t stop until further north, near Chambersburg. 

 

 

Two of the landowners are associated with the 19th century Rom or Roma community, what used to by called Gypsies.  Dayton was a rendezvous point for 19th century Roma, who owned these and perhaps other properties and held community meetings and marriage festivals here.  This particular group of Roma had (based on some quick google research) emigrated from England to Connecticut and then west, and specialized in horse trading.

 

 

Also shown are an inn (the Four Mile House), a toll house, schoolhouse and the Ebenezer church.  Ebenezer was the first congregation in this area, organizing around the time of the War of 1812.  Another feature is the pattern of land subdivision.  One sees the expected larger quarter section farms and other large farms in the 90 to 100 + acres but there are quite a few smallholdings in the vicinity of Needmore Road and along New Troy Pike.

 

By 1895 Ridge Avenue appears, and the Roma farms are still mostly intact.  Interestingly a new landowner appears on the point at the confluence of the Great Miami and Stillwater rivers, OE Mead, perhaps of the Mead paper company.  Perhaps an industrial future for this area or just a country get-away?  A property just to the east is labled “Idylwild”, impying some sort of estate or maybe picnic grove?

 

 

 

Around the turn of the century a proper topographic map was made of the area.  By the time of this map the interurban railroad was built north of Dayton along New Troy Pike.  The map has some modern roads, like Benson, Timber, etc, appearing.  But the land apparently was still mostly open country, farmland.

 

Ebenezer appears as a place name on this map, as a crossroads settlement at the intersection of Frederick and New Troy Pike

 

Since this is a topo map showing landforms and streams, one can overlay some landscape interpretation.  Areas of steeper slopes are in brown, and one can see the ridge of Ridge Avenue, between New Troy Pike and the Stillwater.  The edge of the Great Miami River valley is laced with little ravines and hollows draining onto a bench or third bottom before the land finally drops to the flood plain.  The river bottomlands or flood plains are in light green.  Wagner Ford Road is a testament to the sensitivity of the early settlers to the lay of the land as it follows the Great Miami, but on the very edge of the floodplain.

 

 

 

 

Some oxbows of the Great Miami appear as well, indicating the variable course of the river within the floodplain. 

 

This is an interesting landscape since the bluff & valley aspect of it is not that evident.  It seems flatter than it really is to the casual traveler passing through on North Dixie or I-75

 

Ebenezer

 

Believe it or not some of the old Ebenezer things survive, the church and school, which are now businesses.

 

Here is the church in the background (interurban station with signboard and signal in the foreground)

 

 

Same scene today.  Church now “Auto Corral”

 

 

Another view of the church (note the telltale tall windows), with Frederick Pike heading off to the northwest.  Interurban station is long gone.

 

 

The old school (?)

 

 

The Ebenezer Methodist congregation still exists, but under a different name.  The congregation was expanding as this area was becoming suburban, so a new structure was built around the end of WWI.  With the new building came a new name, Victory Methodist church.  Though one thinks of victory over sin the name was chosen in part to celebrate the US victory in WWI.    One can see the Craftsman/Bungalow aesthetic in what is an English Gothic design, with the heavy rubble stone exterior.

 

 

As the area grew, so did the congregation, expanding using the same style

 

 

Another view, also giving a taste of the housing in the area

 

 

The school also was replaced in the 1920s with this large school  The original part was, I think, in the center, and wings were added later.

 

 

After the turn of the century the interurban kicked off a real estate boom in this part of Harrison Township.    The following set of maps charts the transformation from farm country to suburbia.  The maps show the new subdivisions and land apparently held in speculation by real estate companies or investors.

 

The first plats, before WWI,  were the big Garden City plat, in two parts, separated by Neff Park and the small Fieldston plat

 

In 1920 the old Roma farms go under speculation and development fills in toward the Great Miami.  The first Needmore plat appears

 

 

One should note that during this era auto ownership was becoming widespread, so the viability of these plats may have had as much to do with automobility as with access via interurban.

 

By the middle of the Roaring Twentys the area is in the middle of a boom.  Notable developments are the old Roma farms become Dixie Heights (with streets named “Gypsy” and “Nomad”), a large quarter section farm is platted as Woodland Hills, and Harrison Terrace extents development nearly up to Stop 8 Road.

 

 

In 1926 New Troy Pike became the Dixie Highway.

 

By the time of the Crash the area adds a few smaller subdivisions (we’ve already seen Outing Park).  This is about it for new development until the 1940s, as development went on hiatus during the Depression years.

 

 

As one can see this is a real grab bag of little subdivisions, all in the Ebenezer school district.  The new suburbanites thought that Ebenezer sounded too old-timey, and held a contest for the school kids to pick a name, which would be voted on at a big school assembly.  The name that was chosen was Northridge.  The schoolgirl who picked the name received a box of chocolates as prize. 

 

Northridge also became the catch-all unofficial name for this collection of plats strung out along the Dixie Highway.

 

One should note that during this era property became more and more fragmented into ribbon development along Dixie and the country roads, and as smaller farms and land speculations, perhaps reflecting the impact of automobility permitting dispersed settlement, foreshadowing modern-day exurbia.

 

In the following, the yellow lines are the 1895 property lines drawn on a 1920s map.

 

 

 

Recapping, land platted as of 1930, showing  a fairly consistent corridor of development extending north of the city. 

 

 

…and how it looked on a street map, the Wagner Map.  The interurban was still running at this time, but barely.  A bridge collapse in the early 1930s would put the line out of business.  One can see that this area was perhaps seen as a set of individual suburbs at the time, rather than “Northridge”

 

 

The red circles show the interurban stops.  Stop Eight Road was at te 8th stop out from the city.  Stop One was McCook Field (later to be Parkside Homes), not on the map.

 

Dayton & Troy:  “The Lima Route”

 

This was the interurban.  It did run up to Lima and eventually on to Toledo and connections to Fort Wayne.  This was an unusually well-built line, with long stretches of double track, yet oddly enough this double track sections weren’t in Northridge.  The line apparently ran a suburban service as far as Chambersburg, which was renamed Murlen Heights, after the traffic director of the line.

 

 

The alpha and omega of passenger equipment.  Fist passenger equipment was built (in wood) by the Barney & Smith Company of Dayton, which was right on the line as it entered Dayton.  They looked like motorized passenger cars.  The last were the spiffy somewhat streamlined steel coaches by Cincinnati Car Company, which are closer to streetcars in design.  Color scheme was bright orange with a maroon band on top.  Nice. 

 

(most of these pix are from the Dave’s Railpix site0

 

The D&T wasn’t really a rapid-transit line but a shortline railroad powered by electricity.  So it ran freight, too.  Actually a lot of freight via an early version of just-in-time delivery.  They ran “box motors” (sort of a self propelled boxcars) and custom-built trailer box ears.  The freight house in Dayton is still standing in the Webster Station neighborhood, and there are reports that the line had an even larger freight terminal in North Dayton somewhere.

 

 

The funky cowcatcher in front looks like a version of the man-catchers they had on some California interurbans.

 

Some more passenger equipment.  The very large steel sheathed car is a bit unusual, but a car like this was implicated in a fatal accident, where a northbound express missed a train order and crashed into a stopped wood-body local car somewhere between Needmore and the river, telescoping the car.

 

 

Not good for business.  The lower pix shows how the powered cars pulled regular passenger cars.  In this case the cars were acquired from the New Haven railroad.

 

This line had a run of 30 years or so, before operations were terminated by a bridge collapse caused by a freight.  Ten years later the super-highway would be open.

 

What’s a bit fascinating was that the line operated at the same time autos where coming into use.  So this suburban area experienced true multi-modal transit in the early days…automobiles and local rail service.  The street system reflects this, as streets and subdivisions were laid out to accommodate the interurban, reserving medians and providing frontage roads so the line could continue to operate without conflicting with auto traffic, as shown in this map of the early plats.

 

 

(there might have been one more stop here, too)

 

We’ll take a closer look at this area in another post.

 

A quick look at Chambersburg & the D&T.

 

Chambersburg is, or was, one of the oldest communities in northern Montgomery County.  But it doesn’t exist anymore.  It was renamed Murlin Heights, after the traffic agent of the D&T, not the Arthurian wizard.  And it was mostly eroded away by auto-sprawl. 

 

The original plat from the 1875 county atlas:

 

 

(note the “Negro School” on the west side of the village.  Interesting.)

 

…one can see how the line bypassed Chambersburg.  There must be a story behind this as usually interurbans defaulted to street running when encountering rural villages (like in Vandalia). 

 

 

Amazingly enough one can still trace this bypass using modern aerial photography.  Comparing a plat book map with a modern aerial, the ROW shows up in both.

 

 

And a few close-ups.  Notes are self-explatory

 

 

 

 

Aside from being a neat little exercise in landscape history, this would be an interesting urban design problem, on reintroducing a light rail line onto the same right-of-way and then developing some urban design and architectural strategies to re-urbanized & densify Chambersburg from an auto-strip into a TOD.

 

Simply fantastic as always.