Buckeye Lake

Though it is not in the Hocking Hills area, Buckeye Lake has been a popular vacation spot in central Ohio for a century or more. Originally more a swamp than a lake, dikes and dams were thrown up and it served as a ‘feeder’ for Ohio’s canal system from the early 1800s. As canal use fell off with advance of the railroads, it became a destination for tourists and weekenders around central Ohio—Columbus in particular. The lake lies nearly due east from Columbus.

In the mid-Twentieth Century, the amusement park and dance hall attracted visitors. Many of the best-known big bands of the era played there; my mother went to see some of them in the Thirties. Our whole family would visit the amusement park on occasion in the Fifties. Needless to say, this is a setting I could easily slip into a Hocking Hills story. It is a pretty straight shot up from Logan or Athens.

I remember the big hotel there, which was deteriorating badly when I was a kid. The Catholic church (Our Lady of Mount Carmel) was using it for Sunday school lessons. This was when we lived in Pickerington and drove over for mass. That would have been in the late 50s. I do remember my father (who was not a church-goer) would buy doughnuts at a local bakery. Some would be left by the time we got back to the car! These are just the sort of details from life that can be used in ones fiction, to add that needed touch of realism.

Many weekend cottages lay around Buckeye Lake. Whether those remain, I couldn’t say; I haven’t seen the place in more than half a century. I do know my father took my mother there more than once when he was courting her and when they were newly-weds. I also know they rented one of those cottages briefly when I was a baby. No memories, of course!

I’m posting a picture here of Dad rowing on the lake in 1940, just around the time my parents married, and one of the entry to the amusement park, sometime in the Fifties.