Buckeye Lake
Buckeye Lake, formerly known as Licking Reser- voir, is the only body of water of which our county can boast. It now contains about thirty-six hundred acres. It is partly natural and party artificial. The natural part consisted of three or four little lakes of pure clear water, well stocked with fish. Situated as it is along the line of the Terminal Moraine, there is no doubt that it is the result of the great ice sheet that came down from Canada long ago. When Christopher Gist encamped upon its shores in 1751, he named it the Buffalo Lick, or the Great Swamp. The first settlers, about the year 1800, found wild plums and red thorn-berries growing along its shores in profusion. The center of the original lake was quite deep with a cranberry island floating upon its surface. In the year 1825, when the Ohio Canal was dug, quite a good deal of the surrounding land was flooded4
to enlarge the lake that it might become a feeder to the canal. At Millersport is what is known as the "deep cut." It is about three miles long. Buckeye Lake is one of the prettiest little sheets of water in the State. Its banks are shaded with trees that bend over it, and its placid surface, glinting in the sunlight, is a pleasing contrast to the "rock-ribbed" hills. Here the Isaac Waltons and the Nimrods dis- port themselves and the man can leave the harass- ments of business and hie himself to this little "Touch of Nature," and lull himself into sweet forgetfulness.5