Ohio's Little Smokies
With the City of Portsmouth as your gateway, explore two-thousand years of human and natural history in the Shawnee State Forest Region of Scioto and Adams counties. With its misty hollows, forested ridges, and rolling hills and its spring wildflowers and dramatic fall colors, the region has become known as Ohio’s Little Smokies.
Its history stretches from the time of prehistoric Native Americans who built the Portsmouth Earthworks Complex over two-thousand years ago to more recent historical events in the 1930s when the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) built the modern infrastructure of Shawnee State Park and Forest. Complete the tour in person or virtually using the Scioto Historical mobile app and website.
Start your tour at the Tremper Mound Preserve, which protects one of the most significant ceremonial and mortuary sites of the ancient Hopewell people. And, move forward in time to the era of colonial and frontier conflict when the Shawnee established their village at the Mouth of the Scioto in the early 1730s and the French sent Céloron’s Expedition down the Ohio in 1749, setting in motion what became the French and Indian War and the eventual abandonment of Lower Shawnee Town in the early 1750s.
Learn about the myths and legends surrounding the Raven Rock Lookout, whose view of the Ohio River and hills of Kentucky has attracted human attention since prehistoric times. Consider the history of the first white settlement on Turkey Creek, the construction of the Ohio & Erie Canal and Lock 50, where the Union Mills Distillery stood in the 19th century.
Learn about the history of the Underground Railroad in the region, where James Ashley, the future author of the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery, once worked with local residents to assist freedom seekers escape their enslavement. Explore the history of the Roosevelt Game Preserve in the 1920s and the transformative work of the New Deal’s CCC in the 1930s. Visit locations of former CCC camps and hike the trails that Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “tree army” built for visitors to Shawnee State Park and Forest. Thanks to the larger conservation movement of early 20th century and the work of the CCC the region would be opened to auto-tourism, outdoor recreation, and commercial logging operations, transforming Ohio’s largest state forest into the Little Smokies of today.
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Tremper Mound and Earthworks
Of the many peoples inhabiting the Great Eastern Forest in what is now the United States, the Hopewell Culture, spanning 50 BCE to 400 CE was one of the most artistic and geographically influential. The Hopewell peoples were not the only American Indians to build earthworks, but they certainly were the most consummate. Their works span everything from solitary mounds and earthwork enclosures to immense sacred landscapes with multiple and connecting features, sometimes aligned to cosmic celestial events.
Union Mills and Lock 50 of the Ohio & Erie Canal
Ideally located, where the Ohio and Eric Canal turned to make its final descent across the Scioto River bottoms to its terminus at Portsmouth, Union Mills was developed to take advantage of the large corn crops of the Scioto Valley, which supported cattle and hog farming, along with liquor production on a large scale. Corn from the fertile Scioto and Ohio River bottoms was ground into feed and meal, and turned into mash for making corn whiskey, with hogs and cattle being fattened on the spent grains from the distillery. During the Canal Era, from the early 1830s into the 1890s, Union Mills functioned as a commercial and manufacturing satellite of nearby Portsmouth, generating jobs, profits, and tax revenue for the county and state. While the canal was in operation, Union Mills was a key part of the local economy, which remained largely based on agriculture.
Lower Shawnee Town and Céloron's Expedition of 1749
Beginning in the late 1730s, the Shawnee Indians established one of their principal villages here. Some sixty years earlier, in the 1670s and 80s, the Shawnee had been expelled from the Scioto and…
Raven Rock Nature Preserve
With its dramatic overlook, Raven Rock has long been an attraction for area residents and visitors. Its history is legendary, with some stories placing, at various moments in time, Daniel Boone and Tecumseh at its edge, 500 feet above the Ohio River.
Major John Belli and the First American Settlement on Turkey Creek
In the summer of 1787, John O'Bannon surveyed a one-thousand acre parcel at the Mouth of Turkey Creek in what would become Scioto County, Ohio. O'Bannon selected these lands for Larkin Smith, a veteran of the Virginia Line of the Continental Army, who claimed these acres as compensation for his three years service in the Revolutionary War.
James M. Ashley and the Underground Railroad in Friendship, Ohio
In 1841, a seventeen-year-old James M. Ashley conducted a group of seven African American freedom seekers from Greenup County, Kentucky, down the Ohio River, past Portsmouth, Ohio, to the West Side of the Scioto River. There he met members of the Veach family, who lived near the Mouth of Turkey Creek, in a community now known as Friendship, Ohio. Ashley, who is best remembered as the author of the Thirteenth Amendment, delivered his passengers into the hands of a trusted network of antislavery evangelical Christians of various faiths. Later in life, Ashley would recall this as his first "acquaintance with U. G. R. R. operations."
CCC Cabin Museum and the Shawnee State Park Nature Center
The Shawnee State Park Nature Center, which is located just below the Turkey Creek Lake Dam, carries on the traditions of the original Roosevelt Game Preserve, from which the Park was first carved in the 1930s. Visitors can see live specimens of salamanders, frogs, turtles, snakes, and other critters that make their homes in the Shawnee State Forest Region.
One Hundred Years of Conservation in Shawnee State Park: Gov. Harry L. Davis and the Dedication of Ohio’s Theodore Roosevelt Preserve
The Theodore Roosevelt Preserve was dedicated at 3pm on December 5th, 1922, by Governor Harry L. Davis. It began with 20,000 acres as a "game and reforestation preserve." At the time of its…
Roosevelt Lake and the CCC Stone Memorial: Memorializing the Men Who Built Shawnee State Park and Forest
In 1934, a segregated, all-black Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) unit of enrollees, known as Company 1545, dammed the waters of Mackletree Run and Turkey Creek, creating Roosevelt Lake, the…
Roosevelt Game Preserve Headquarters and "the Zoo": Ohio's First Nature Center in Hobey Hollow
The headquarters for Roosevelt Game Preserve and "Zoo," established in 1922, ought to be considered Ohio's first state-operated "nature center" in what is now Shawnee State Forest. Located up…
Picnic Point and Auto-tourism in Ohio's Little Smokies
With a spectacular view of the Ohio River, the hills of Kentucky, and the City of Portsmouth, Picnic Point in the Shawnee State Forest offers visitors a memorable experience. While there are a number of dramatic overlooks of the Ohio River found throughout the region, Picnic Point is the only one that is easily accessible by automobile.Tour curated by: Andrew Feight, Ph.D.