Cold Creek Pond in the heart of Castalia. At the other end of this pond is a spring that feeds the pond and the headwaters of Cold Creek.

Castalia

Castalia is a town located near the center of Magaretta Township along the Erie County's western boundary. The area has a rich and varied history that dates back to the early 1700s. For many Ohioans Castalia was famous for its main tourist attraction: Blue Hole which attracted 165,000 visitors each summer during its peak years primarily because of SR 269 which for a long time was the main route to Cedar Point Amusement Park from central and southern Ohio.

Castalia is also known for fishing. It seems that the same reason families made stopping at Blue Hole as part of their annual pilgrimage to Cedar Point, is also the reason for the great trout fishing. The large openings in the earth's crust in this area, allows an underground river to rise up and overflow these large openings and then wind its way through the township to Sandusky Bay. The large natural springs in and around Castalia are a constant 40 degrees and once they become oxygenated by twisting and bubbling over the rocks, make an ideal breeding ground for cold-water loving trout.

Resthaven Wildlife Pond

One of those areas is today known as the Resthaven Wildlife Area located just north of Castalia. It includes more than 2,000 acres of wetlands, 400 acres of water and 13 ponds where carry-in boats can be used. It is a great place for backwoods fishing for bass, bluegill, crappie, sunfish and channel cats.

Castalia Quarry Reserve

Tired of the all the playgrounds along Ohio's North Coast? Try a relaxing walk in the Castalia Quarry Reserve located just southwest of Castalia. It is the remains of the Wagner Quarry Company's Quarry #5 that has been turned into a park, but don't look for swing sets or jungle gyms, but there are a few picnic tables. This is rugged, but relaxing place to get in touch with your inner self, if you can find solace just being alone.

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There are multiple trails here. First, parking is on the north side of SR 101, and the quarry is on the south side of the highway. Be careful crossing the highway as traffic is traveling at highway speeds. One of the trails circles the upper rim and the another slopes gently down to the bottom of the quarry for a completely different perspective. Bring your binoculars for a little bird watching. There's also a 4 mile mountain bike trail that I'm told is easy and not to difficult to master. For hikers: please stay off the dirt bike trails as a number of places where the bikers can't see over a particular jump, and they just wind up in your lap-- not good. The Castalia Quarry Reserve is part of the Erie Metro Parks and rock climbing is not permitted, nor are horses.

History of Castalia

The first inhabitants of this area weren't aware of the possibility of raising trout, but they did find that they could grow wheat, oats and potatoes here once a few drainage canals were built that helped solve the marshy land problem. In the early days, long before Castalia was first laid out as a town in 1836, there was a Wyandot settlement here that took advantage of the spring waters flowing through the area. Not only is 40 degree water cool in the summer, but it is also warm in the winter when all the other streams are frozen solid. This means that game is attracted to the streams and creeks year round, and that means the food supply is greatly extended.

In the early 1800s, there were several families that had put down roots along the headwaters of Cold Creek. One of those were the Docartus Snow family living on the south side of Cold Creek (just east of where the bridge is located today) which is where the dam and gristmill were located which he built in 1810 after arriving here from New York. Another family, the Butlers lived on the opposite side of the creek and the Putnams lived about a half mile down the creek. Besides the 3 families there were also two bachelors farming this area. All totaled, there were 29 men women and children in what would one day become Castalia.

Castalia's Cold Creek Duck Pond today

For whatever reason this small community ignored warnings that Indians had been actively attacking settlers in the area since the previous year. In fact, most families had long departed going either further east or southeast towards Mansfield where safety could be better insured. In late May 1813, at about the same time that Tecumseh was attacking Fort Meigs just west of here and south of Toledo, a group of 16 Indians paddled by canoe up from Sandusky Bay on Pickerel Creek to a point which was about 10 miles west of the 3 families. They then made their way overland towards where they had heard several families were still working the land. They knew the British in Detroit were paying bounties for American scalps or for hostages.

At the time of the attack the men were in the fields planting. All of the women and children were in or around the Snow house as Mrs. Snow was confined to her bed. The survivors said the Indians were in the house before anyone realized they were even outside. Those that could walk were taken away. Some of the children saw the Indians coming and ran away and tried to hide. But they were quickly rounded up. All of the women and children were gathered together outside the Snow house. Several of the Indians went back inside and trashed everything they could get their hands on.

Then the trip to Detroit began. It would take just over 3 days, but during this trip almost all of the children would one-by-one be killed, scalped and mutilated. Each evening the party would stop and the Indians would prepare a bit of food and the others would busy themselves stretching and drying the collected scalps all the while the hostages remained huddled together fearing which of them would be killed next. By the time the party arrived in Detroit, 8 hostages were turned over to the British. This was about the first week of June.

As the Indians were just beginning to make their way to Lake Erie, the three husbands had been alerted by one of the children that had fled alerting them to the attack, but by the time they arrived at the house, the Indians had already departed. The men then began falling them as quickly as possible until they came upon the first mutilated child. From there all the way to the lake it would be a chase of sorrow and tears as they came upon one dead family member or friend after another.

From that time on they were held prisoners by the British, but no further harm came and in September of that year, after Commodore Perry defeated the British on Lake Erie off South Bass Island, and after General Harrison had taken Detroit and killed Tecumseh, the hostages were finally freed and the three men came to Detroit to return them safely to their homes in Cold Creek.

Blue Hole Post Card and as it appears today.

The Blue Hole(s) of Margaretta Township in Erie County

Blue Hole was about 75 feet in diameter, had an extremely blue cast to it and because of its depth seemed to be bottomless. In the flat lands of northern Ohio, Blue Hole was an enigma that caused people to pay money to stare at it and ponder the meaning of life. Actually, it is not unique to the area. There are multiple Blue Holes around Castalia. The Blue Hole that attracted so much attention was is now off limits to the public and is on the grounds of the Castalia Trout Club. This should not be confused with the other Blue Hole which is owned by the Castalia State Fish Hatchery which is operated by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, which IS open for public viewing. One thing to know is that because of the chemical make up of the water and the fact that there are extremely low levels of oxygen in the water, these blue sink holes are unable to support fish.

What are these blue holes? In general terms they're openings where the limestone has collapsed into an underground stream. This streams flows north winding its way into Sandusky Bay. It remains at a constant temperature year round of about 40 degrees.

CASTALIA SPORTING CLUB
The club land would later become known as Castalia Farms, but for almost a half century it was Cleveland's civic, business and political leaders all male hangout where the primary goal was to relax and do some trout fishing. The Castalia Sporting Club was a private club that existed from the 1870s to the mid 1930s and was the center of social activity for some of Cleveland's civic, business and political leaders. The members financed the building of a clubhouse and eventually purchased the land owned by the Castalia Milling Company. For the most part the club was a men's private fishing spot and women were only permitted as guests. They kept meticulous records about the number, size and weight of the trout they caught and were successful in documenting what worked and what did not. The club survived into the Great Depression, but as that decade waned, membership roles began to decline and eventually the club closed and the land was purchased by a cement manufacturing company.

Margaretta Township

How this township got the name known by everyone today is not the result of a misspelling of a favorite south-of-the-border tequila drink. It actually comes from the fact that a number of its citizens of Erie County requested the original township name be changed in 1812. The person that could do that was the man who was in the process of purchasing all of the land, Major Frederick Falley. When confronted with this strongly expressed concern, he said, "Well, my mother, my sister and more than a few of my nieces were named Margaret, how do you feel about the name Margaretta?" Those who had expressed their concerns replied: "Margaretta is just fine, just as long as it's not Patterson!"

Why not Patterson you might wonder? It was named for Hugh Patterson, a British Indian trader who had been contemplating purchasing the township. But, when a pioneer missionary, Rev. Joseph Badger in the Western Reserve working with the Wyandots had some dealings with Mr. Patterson and some of the Native Americans who also had dealings with him. One such individual was the famous Wyandot leader, the Crane. It was his request through the missionary to write a letter to General Harrison as quickly as possible to remove Hugh Patterson from the land because Hugh Patterson was going to great lengths to stir up the Wyandot against the Americans.

Trout Farms

There are multiple trout farms in Magaretta Township including an ODNR fish hatchery. The primary reason for this are the numerous springs in the area that gush forth a large volume of water every day that is extremely cold. It is this cold temperature that makes it ideal for raising trout which thrive in the constantly flowing cold water that almost never freezes even during extremely cold winters. Back in the fall of 1870 John Hoyt, the owner of the Castalia paper mills, purchased a thousand trout eggs to see if the water in Cold Creek could successfully support the trout. Ever since then trout farming has been widely fostered in this area.