A trip along the Little Miami River corridor is more than an adventure on a scenic trail; it is a trek through time.  The Little Miami River Valley was the backdrop for some great episodes, harrowing escapes, and comical moments in Ohio history.  Along its banks, the exploits of larger-than-life frontiersmen, legendary Indians, and lesser-known but equally interesting characters helped shape our state.  The wild and scenic Little Miami River, itself, gets its sparkling personality from the primeval forces of nature that shaped the land and the river gorge.

In the topsy-turvy world of two million years ago, before the Ohio River and Little Miami River were born, the ancient Teays River cut a diagonal path from the area near modern-day Portsmouth, flowing northwest to Fort Wayne.  Along came a glacier that blocked the flow of the river, forcing the moving water to cut deep into the bedrock below, and erasing much of the Teays River channel.  Eventually, overflowing water along the margin of the glacier carved out a new channel that would become the Ohio River.  About 300,000 years ago, another lumbering glacier crept into the area that would one day be southwest Ohio.  Once again, the intruding ice and sloshing meltwater gouged out gorges, deposited rocks and gravel, and traced the path of the tributaries we know today.  As a result, the modern Little Miami is a patchwork of babbling brooks framed by spongy springs, cataracts tumbling through narrow cliffs, and long lazy stretches meandering through broad valleys.

The prehistoric people who settled in this area sensed there was something special and powerful here.  Some 2,000 years ago, Hopewell moundbuilders chose a bluff above the Little Miami to build a sprawling ceremonial site.  For generations, the Hopewell faithful scraped the earth with crude bone shovels and heaped it by the basketful to create the Fort Ancient earthworks.  The earthen walls range from four feet tall to more than 30 feet in height, spanning 3.5 miles along the ridge.  Openings in the walls reflect a landscape-wide celestial calendar that hints at a surprisingly sophisticated understanding of astronomy.  The ridge-top marvel has been preserved for posterity, and today, Fort Ancient State Memorial is one of Ohio’s premier Ohio Historical Society sites.

The great Shawnee war chief, Blackfish, established his village of Old Chillicothe (now Oldtown, north of Xenia) on the banks of the Little Miami in 1774.  Frontier icon Daniel Boone was brought here as a captive in 1778, after being paraded up the Little Miami by triumphant Shawnee warriors.  The Shawnee adopted Boone into a family, and included him in their sports and ceremonies.  Boone was content to stay for a few months, but when he learned about the Shawnees’ plan to send a war party to his old Kentucky home, Boone escaped to warn his kin of the coming raid.  Two years later, the town was abandoned by the Shawnee to thwart General George Rogers Clark’s retaliatory expedition up the Little Miami with 1,000 Kentucky militia men.

Within a year after General “Mad” Anthony Wayne’s victory at Fallen Timbers in 1795 displaced the Native Americans, towns were talking shape along the Little Miami at Deerfield (now South Lebanon), Lebanon and Waynesville.  One of Lebanon’s early residents, Captain Robert Benham, risked life and limb to help clear the path for settlement. Benham was a veteran of the Revolutionary War, and served in (and survived) Josiah Harmar’s and Arthur St. Clair’s disastrous campaigns, as well as Wayne’s triumphant march to Fallen Timbers.  Like Wayne, Benham was incredibly tough, and quite a bit luckier.  In 1779, young Benham was on a mission with Major David Rogers and a few dozen men of the Virginia militia to retrieve munitions and supplies from New Orleans and return them to Fort Pitt.  On the return trip up the Ohio River, a few miles from the mouth of the Little Miami, the soldiers were attacked by several hundred Indians.  Most were killed or mortally wounded.  Benham was shot through both hips in the fighting, and unable to flee with the few able-bodied militia.  The quick thinking Benham dragged himself to a large fallen tree nearby, and hid amid the branches.  Benham did not dare show himself, but by the second night, he was so famished that he shot at a raccoon in a tree close by.  After the shot range out, a desperate voice cried out, “Whoever you are, for God’s sake, answer me!”  Benham was relieved to find another survivor of the battle, who had suffered two broken arms, but was able to walk.  Together, Benham and his companion provided arms and legs for the other, so that they were able to feed themselves and tend to their wounds.  They survived like this for weeks in the wilderness.  Finally, the disheveled pair was rescued when they waved down a flat boat floating along on the Ohio River, and convinced the alarmed crew that they were not decoys for an Indian ambush.

Lebanon was the home of another colorful character, 9th Ohio Governor Jeremiah Morrow, who served from 1822 to 1826.  Morrow was passionate about public works, and his overriding career goal was to build transportation systems to get Ohioans moving.  In addition to his duties as governor, Morrow served as Ohio’s canal commissioner, as well as president of the Little Miami Railroad Company.  Despite his great ambitions, Morrow was a plain and humble man who was sometimes underestimated, as illustrated in this historian’s account of a visit to Ohio by the Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar in 1825:

“The dwelling of the governor consists of a plain frame house, situated on a little elevation not far from the shore of the Little Miami… When he (the duke) reached the farm he saw a small party of men in a new field, rolling logs.  This scene…is familiar to those of us fortunate enough to have been brought up in Ohio, but to a European raised in courts, it must have been an amazing sight.  Accosting one of the workmen, a homely little man in a red flannel shirt, and with a smudge of charcoal across his cheek, he (the duke) asked, ‘Where is your master, sir?  It is the governor of the state, Governor Morrow, I am inquiring for.’  ‘Well, I am Jeremiah Morrow,’ replied the son of toil, with unaffected and unconscious simplicity.  The Grand Duke stood amazed.”

Jeremiah Morrow’s historic Little Miami Railroad provided the infrastructure for today’s Little Miami scenic trail.  From its completion in 1848 until the Civil War, the Little Miami railroad was primarily popular with local commuters between Cincinnati and Springfield.  In 1861, Camp Dennison was established along either side of the tracks as a training grounds for Union Army soldiers.  During Confederate Colonel John Hunt Morgan’s infamous raid into Ohio in 1863, Morgan and his troops attacked one of the military trains on the Little Miami Railroad carrying 150 new recruits to Camp Dennison.  Most of the passengers escaped unharmed, although the train was wrecked, injuring the engineer and killing the fireman.  Today, a monument and cannon commemorate the historic camp, and the nearby town of Camp Dennison honors the name.

Another remnant of bygone days along the trail is the old powder factory at Kings Mill.  Taking advantage of the proximity of the river and the railroad, Joseph King built a gunpowder mill in 1878 to produce sporting powder and blasting powder.  In 1887, King’s son-in-law started a companion business, the Peters Cartridge Company, where shotgun shells were assembled using a state-of-the-art loading machine.  Nearby, the company town of Kings Mill was established in 1889 for workers at the thriving businesses.  Tragically, in 1890, an explosive collision between gunpowder-filled train cars killed 11 and ignited fires that caused extensive damage.  The town was shaken, but King was determined to rebuild.  By the onset of World War I, more than 1,000 employees were busy producing 1.5 million cartridges a day for the Allied troops.  Demand dropped sharply after 1918, but World War II provided a grim shot in the arm, as the plant retooled to produce more than 50 million pounds of shells each month for soldiers’ carbine rifles.  The plant closed in 1944, but the interesting old building complex still stands, and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.  Trespassing is strictly prohibited today, yet trail users occasionally report unexplained sounds and sightings of spectral figures flitting by the windows.

At the turn of the 19th century, the community of Terrace Park added an entertaining dimension to the commute along the Little Miami Railroad.  From the late 1800s until 1916, Terrace Park served as the winter home of John Robinson’s Circus, and the Little Miami rail line hosted the cheerful 35-car circus train.  The antics of the circus animals and performers were amusing for the railroad passengers and crew, although there was drama from time to time when an escaped lion prowled the neighborhood, or a panther slipped away from its handler.  Once in a while, trains were delayed by elephants crossing the tracks.  Residents grew accustomed to the nightly ritual of walking the camels, and the jungle sounds after dark.  Unfortunately, a financial muddle in 1916 prompted John G. Robinson to sell the family business, and the circus left town under new management.  However, to the delight of passersby, Robinson kept four elephants as pets and encouraged them to practice tricks in the yard whenever there was an audience.

In its heyday, the Little Miami Railroad brought prosperity to the towns along the tracks.  After World War II, though, the railroad business gradually declined as trucks and autombiles began to crowd the vast ribbons of new interstate highways.  A generation later, the trains chugged to a halt, and the Little Miami rail line north of Cincinnati was retired in the 1970s.  The tracks had outlived their usefulness, but the level railroad bed and the right-of-way winding along the scenic river was recognized as an invaluable recreational resource.  In 1979, the 50-mile stretch from Hedges Road in Greene County to Terrace Park in Hamilton County was designated as Little Miami State Park.

Today, the park provides more than 50 miles of accessible paved trail and a 60-foot corridor for strolling, rolling, hiking and biking, as well as cross-country skiing and horseback riding.  Other park facilities include river access for canoeing and fishing, and staging areas with parking, restrooms and picnic areas.