Knapsack 8-26

Notes From My Knapsack 8-26-11

Jeff Gill

 

A funny name, a fascinating history

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Every so often, you may find yourself having to explain something to out of town, out of state friends and families.

 

"Licking County? Really?"

 

Like many language shifts, the culture and our sense of what's ludicrous, silly, or vaguely off has changed over the centuries.

 

Over 200 years ago, quite a few Licking Creeks and Licking Rivers were named across the United States. It appears that we are the only Licking County, but the watershed that gave us our name, when we were peeled off of Fairfield County in 1808, has cousins in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and Maryland.

 

The origin, most folks know, is in salt licks. When you can identify a spot animals gather, you have an edge in hunting. Today some hunters still set out salt blocks to draw game to a particular spot. Salt licks have a potential commercial application in a frontier setting, where salt supplies have to come over the mountains from long distances, and cost accordingly. A local salt supply can be a real boon for a settlement.

 

Usually, you have less of an exposed area of mineral salts (which would dissolve quickly if exposed, anyhow) than you have a spring with a salt taste, stemming from a geologic source deep below the ground which is carried up by the artesian spring in question. Animals who crave salt in their systems will go out of their way to drink it, just as salty food doesn't taste too strongly salted if you've been out and working up a sweat. The body wants and needs a certain amount of salt, low sodium diets being a modern issue of too much all the time.

 

So a "Salt Fork" or "Salt Springs" is another indication of pioneer interests, and we have plenty of those around Ohio and beyond. Running right through Granville's own Spring Valley Nature Preserve is Salt Run.

 

Currently, the Granville Township Trustees, the Granville Recreation District, and some faculty & students from Denison University are working at returning Salt Run to a more natural flow. A low dam and retaining wall are almost all that remain of the old Spring Valley pool, and they are in the process of removal, which will be followed by some careful planting and un-scaping to give the natural plants and animals a chance to return and thrive.

 

Between the picnic shelter and Salt Run are two low parallel walls of earth. Preliminary research shows that they date to an attempt in 1820 to sluice off some of the Salt Run water and evaporate or cook down useable salt from the creek, which ended fairly quickly when it was determined that the energy it took to reduce salt from solution was not cost effective. There's also another low earthwork further south, deeper in the woods, that has been dated to the Middle Woodland period (c. 2,000 years ago) which may have been related to salt production as well.

 

During the research on all this, I went back to the question "how did Licking County get named?" The earliest note, preceding many later mentions of a conveniently unchallengable possibility of licks in the "Great Buffalo Swamp" which has been submerged under Buckeye Lake since the 1830s, is in the Journal of Christopher Gist, from 1751.

 

He enters what is now Licking County from the Coshocton area, cutting across the eastern half of the region, but with more to say, possibly told him by the noted trader George Croghan or one of the other members of his party already familiar with the landscape, that from "Licking Creek about 6 M from the Mouth, are several Salt Licks, or Ponds, formed by little Streams or Dreins (sic) of Water, clear but of a blueish Color, & salt Taste the Traders and Indians boil their meat in this Water, which (if proper Care be not taken) will sometimes make it too salt to eat." (Wednesday 16 January 1751)

 

Nowadays, the mouth of a river would be the end of it; for the modern Licking River, that's in Zanesville, and six miles up from that barely gets you to Dillon Reservoir, and there's no story that I can find of salt licks or springs near there.

 

Six miles up from where today's North Fork, South Fork, and the one-time so-called Raccoon Fork come together, as forks of the Licking drainage; six miles up the Raccoon fork of Licking Creek puts you right at where Salt Run empties into the larger stream.

 

It may well be, then, that when you hike at Spring Valley Nature Preserve, you are walking near the source of Licking County's name itself!

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and supply preacher around central Ohio; tell him a story at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow Knapsack @Twitter.