Cincinnati, Columbus & Hocking Valley Railway

Greetings railfans. This is my first ever post here, so please be patient with me if I slip up and violate any sacred railroad.net protocol.

I am trying to find out anything I can about a small railway that once existed close to where I live that was called the Cincinnati, Columbus & Hocking Valley Railway. I enjoy exploring abandoned rail lines, and some portion of the right of way for this railroad undoubtedly passes through public land and I'd like to see if anything of interest remains but I am having trouble locating precisely where the railway used to be. For starters, here's everything I can determine about the railway, garnered from a bunch of sources, mostly official county histories:

December 9, 1875: Railroad organized as Waynesville, Port William & Jeffersonville Railroad
November 27, 1876: Name changed to Columbus, Washington & Cincinnati Railroad
June 1st, 1877: Grading began at Allentown (now known as Octa, Ohio in Fayette County)
September, 1877: Line completed to Bowersville, Ohio in Greene County
October, 1877: Line completed to Port William, Ohio in Clinton County
December, 1877: Line completed to Glenwood, Ohio in Clinton County
April, 1878: Line completed to New Burlington, Ohio in Clinton County
July, 1878: Line completed to Claysville Junction, Ohio in Warren County
February 15, 1881: Name changed to Cincinnati, Columbus & Hocking Valley Railway
Late 1881: Line changed to standard gauge and extended to Jeffersonville, Ohio in Fayette County
July 1887: Railroad shut down
1894: Track from McKay's Station, Ohio in Clinton County to Jeffersonville was bought by Ohio Southern Railway. The track from McKay's Station to Claysville Junction was abandoned. The line was extended from Jeffersonville to Sedalia, Ohio in Madison County (also known as Midway). The line was also extended from McKay's Station to South Kingman, Ohio in Clinton County. The line eventually becomes part of the Detroit, Toledo & Ironton Railroad
1933: Detroit, Toledo & Ironton shuts down the line for good

Stations along the original route (in order, from east to west):
Allentown (now known as Octa, in Fayette County);
Pearson's (Fayette County, a couple farm houses still in this area);
Bowersville (Greene County);
Port William (Clinton County);
Mt. Pleasant (Clinton County, a small cluster of houses still here);
McKay's Station (Clinton County small cluster of houses still here);
Glenwood (Clinton County, I can't determine where this was);
New Burlington (Clinton County, town abandoned around 1970 to make way for Ceasar Creek Lake, although site of town not under water);
Claysville Junction (Warren County, I can't determine where this was. Note, Claysville Ohio is today known as Roxanna in Greene County on the Warren County line. Claysville Junction was somewhere south of Claysville in Warren County).

What I would like help with is determining the exact course of this railway from McKay's Station to Claysville Junction. Since this section was abandoned in the late 1800s, I haven't been able to find any maps of it like the ones that exist for the part used by Detroit, Toledo & Ironton into the 1930s. I haven't been able to find Glenwood or Claysville Junction on any modern maps. Somewhere in Ceasar Creek State Park and Spring Valley Wildlife Area should be some recognizable remains of the railway and the Claysville Junction where it hooked up with the Little Miami Railroad. If anyone out there has any old maps or other info about this, I'd be interested to see it. Otherwise, please enjoy this brief synopsis of a very obscure railroad that I typed up this evening.

Thanks,

Greg in Ohio

Hi Greg--
My father grew up on a farm near Kingman, and my grandparents moved from there to New Burlington in 1956. My dad was fairly knowledgeable about the various railroads that had been in the area--he pointed out where the station had been in South Kingman, and showed me some abutments that remained in Port William. But I never heard him say anything about a railroad ROW in or near New Burlington, and I never saw any evidence that there had been one.
As you say, the site where the town was is now part of the Caesar Creek Reservoir district, and that area is dry.
I don't believe that route 380 goes through the townsite now, although it once did.

Interesting about Roxanna originally having been Claysville. All I can suggest for Claysville Junction is to scan satellite maps of the area near the current rail trail.

Alloy,

Thanks for the followup.

Here's a couple more hints to the location of the railway:

"This road, as first surveyed, passed through our township, along the waters of Buck Run. It was never located on that line, but was afterward surveyed higher up in the township, and run just south of the village of New Burlington." From the Chester Township chapter of the official history of Clinton County

"A portion of this railway ran through Warren County just south of the Roxanna-New Burlington Road. The railroad bed is still visible in some areas." from an article entitled "Early Railways Of The Warren County Area" by Dallas Bogan at www.rootsweb.ancestry.com

I will contact Dallas Bogan and see what he knows, I just found that info on the web. There is an email address for the author.

Regards,

Greg

This was to be part of a narrow-gauge line between Cincinnati and Columbus, with a Cincinnati, Lebanon and Northern predecessor building the south end. (The CL&N owned unfinished grading from Dodds to Waynesville.) I tried to figure out the exact route of the CC&HV a few months ago and ended up drawing a rough line. I just took another look and got the same goose egg.

Here is a link to a New Burlington site with a map in the photo gallery showing a small section of the railroad.I used to visit grandparents who lived on a farm near New Burlington.We crossed an old railroad outside of the town in the 1960s I have not been able to nail down what it was.DT&I Kingman Branch,PRR Roxanna Branch or Cincinnati Columbus and Hocking Valley.http://newburlington-lives.com/

Hi all,

I see this post is a few years old, but would love to hear from some of you...

My in-laws live off of US 68 and their driveway is part of the bed for the grasshopper line you were discussing. I've just put some info out that I had worked on a few years ago, and would like to get more input and feedback on this. I've traced the narrow-gauge track down from Port William to McKay station, but I too heard that it once made it to Waynesville. I just don't know how it ran in that direction. Google satellite maps are not too helpful there. We used to live on Corwin Road in Waynesville, so I know that area pretty well.

Please take a look at my post below (and the Google map I did a while back) and get back to me if you will. I heard there is a guy who lives in Port William who knows all about the grasshopper line. I'd love to see it turned into a bike path, to preserve it! But for now I'd just like to learn more.

http://www.starnesfam.com/2013/03/cinci ... ilway-bed/

Thanks!
- Roger

I had said in an earlier post in this thread that I’ve never seen any evidence of a ROW for this railroad around New Burlington, and satellite pictures don’t show anything between New Burlington and Roxanna, where the junction with the PRR Little Miami line would have occurred.

However, I suddenly had a memory of a bridge that I discovered one evening, just off Roxanna--New Burlington road. This was in 1971. It was a large truss bridge, of a type that was common on the roads around that part of Ohio. Since I had never heard of any railroad in that area, I assumed it had been a highway bridge.

You can still see the remnants of the roads that led to it. If you are leaving the site of New Burlington on 380, headed toward Xenia, you will see a left turn onto Roxanna—New Burlington road within a mile. After making that turn, the bridge over Caesar’s Creek is probably another half-mile. On either side of that bridge, there are road stubs to the left of the bridge.

On Google maps, the first stub is labeled “Caesar Creek Road.” The stub on the other side of the bridge shows up on Satellite view, and you can see that it follows the creek on that side. Both of these lead to a point just downstream, and it was there that I saw the truss bridge. I don’t remember whether I could drive over it, or not—my memory is that it was not passable.

I can’t see any trace of a bridge there with satellite view. But I would assume the abutments are still there. It makes more sense that this was an abandoned railroad bridge, because there would have been no need to have two roads crossing the creek so close together.

"This road, as first surveyed, passed through our township, along the waters of Buck Run. It was never located on that line, but was afterward surveyed higher up in the township, and run just south of the village of New Burlington." From the Chester Township chapter of the official history of Clinton County

An update to yesterday’s post.

After my girlfriend and I studied both satellite and old topographical maps, I can see that the current Roxanna-New Burlington Road bridge is not the one I drove over in 1971. So the Caesar Creek stub road is not the one that led to the unknown truss bridge.

The old Roxanna-New Burlington road alignment can be seen as a trace on satellite. The unknown truss bridge that I drove to would have been south of that. There is some sort of alignment on the west bank of Caesar’s Creek, so I could have driven down a road on that side of the creek.

Roger was kind enough to send me a map of where he thought the railroad came through in this area. His proposed ROW lines up with where I would have seen the truss bridge over Caesar’s Creek.

https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mi ... sp=sharing" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;