Notes From My Knapsack 4-30-06
Jeff Gill

Thornwood Drive, connecting Union Township’s northern reaches and the Newark/Granville corridor since before the Civil War, is still a crucial link for Licking County.
Many of you shared your interest with me last week in where and how the "Dugway" changed traffic patterns; along with the Deep Cut on the west edge of Millersport, these two projects are probably only second to the National Road and the Ohio & Erie Canal in shaping the first hundred years of our region.
Just as the expansion of Rt. 79 wiped away a few remaining traces of the canal bed and basins in recent years, the new Thornwood connector and Cherry Valley interchange will obscure some still visible chunks of history, wherever the new path goes.
Thornwood begins in the south where it does today, starting at Beaver Run Road (named for early settler David Bever, so don’t look for bucktooth rodents nearby). Arrowing north past the Sts. Peter and Paul Retreat Center of the Diocese of Columbus (former PIME), this is clearly a surveyed route, not a former Indian footpath.
But just at the foot of the hill to West Main (which does have that prehistoric angularity), where Hope Timber sits above, there is a small "jog" in Thornwood, a noticeable shift but small enough that it will certainly vanish in the coming widening.
The reason for this jog is simple: in horsepower days, Thornwood ended here, turning right and looping around the steep slope to join Main near Vensil-Orr-Chute’s new funeral home.
The Showman farm, once a true Licking County agricultural showplace, still sits in part on the ridge beyond the bike path stop on Cherry Valley Road. A traveler from the rich grain markets of Hebron heading for Granville, or an underground railroad conductor seeking a rest on the way to Mount Vernon, Mansfield, and ultimately Canada, has to get around that ridge.
From the meander east around the southern side of the Showman ridge, you would cross Main, called the Columbus Road this far away from Newark proper back then. You’d go north along Showman St. (still called that), and at Central City (now mainly the Market Basket) follow Cherry Valley Road around the northern half of the Showman farm to . . . the Showman Bridge! At this crossing of Raccoon Creek an aqueduct for the Granville Feeder of the Ohio & Erie Canal lay alongside the bridge, and if you come towards the Cherry Valley/Reddington Road intersection from the west, you can clearly see the age of the bridge that we still use from the piers and streamlined footers in the creekbed.
River Road, Reddington, and Thornwood all dissolve into a tangle today which will vanish under whatever new interchange is built at the end of Thornwood to route us into Rt. 16. Just as wagons couldn’t, and didn’t, go straight up the hill north to join Main Street, neither did the 1800’s River Road do anything but push on to join Cherry Valley Road. Somewhere after 1900 power equipment and the horseless carriage that Mr. Ford up in Detroit made popular created the link from the foot of Showman Ridge, pushing Thornwood from the jog, up to cross Main and James Road, then up and over to drop down onto River Road.
Now larger trucks and increased expansion of both Newark and Heath mean this set of intersections will change again. The traces of the original paths and roads will only be seen in the books and diaries about former days and olden times, with the stray street sign or neighborhood name reminding us of another way.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; share your stories with him at disciple@voyager.net.