We have a GREAT FUTURE in Beavercreek, short term and on the horizon! Spirits are high, new businesses and restaurants are opening, homes are selling and our community is booming! We're looking forward to a number of exciting projects...
Drive south (left) on Grange Hall Road. At the southwest corner of Grange Hall Road and Pentagon Boulevard is where the Nicodemus cabin was discovered in 1976 and subsequently moved to Wartinger Park. Insect infestation ultimately caused its removal from the park, but a replica was built using the original fireplace. The original structure was likely built by a member of the Hotopp (Hoetopp) family.
Continuing south, we bisect the 158 acres of the Solomon Snypp property and turn west onto Kemp Road, named for Jacob Kemp. On the north side of the road near the site of 3962 Kemp Road sat the second Aley School #3. Across the street near 2237 LaGrange Road was the Ealy (Aley) blacksmith shop. Further west is Aley Church, founded in 1838 by Jacob Aley. The smaller building at the west end of the parking lot was second church, built after a fire consumed the first. Just west of the church at 2100 Wagner Trace Drive lies the former Abraham Hawker Estate which encompasses the current Wagner Trace and Summerfield Village neighborhoods.
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In town in the mid-1800’s you’d have found a General Store and blacksmith shop as well as the pictured New Germany School #11, which burned down in February 1920 while the teacher and pupils were eating lunch - no reported injuries. Much of the land in 1874 was owned by members of the Harshman Family.
During the early twentieth century, the social lives of those in northern Beavercreek Township revolved around New Germany Hall, famous for their 50/50 dances - 50% round dancing and 50% square dancing. The Hall clothing store was also a popular local shopping destination.
If you continued west northwest through Wright Patterson Air Force Base, you would have found yourself in a town known as Harshmanville, found opposite the National Museum of the United States Air Force (and their AWESOME virtual tours) on Springfield Street. In the late 1800’s the Gerlaugh, Zink, Glaser, Barr, Kraft & Bates families were prevalent.
Our geographic neighbor, Fairborn, has a truly unique story of how it ‘came together’! There’s a short documentary describing how the towns of Fairfield and Osborn became Fairborn.
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Our tour begins at 2800 New Germany-Trebein Road – formerly the 112 acre farm of J.L. Lantz and currently The Beavercreek Golf Club. The 1855 farms of Sam Brown, Edward Tobias, George Harner and Henry Ankeney were cut from the rolling, densely wooded hills of this area known as ‘The Big Woods’.
Born in 1919, lifelong Beavercreek resident Ruth Booher-Stafford recalled young ladies from around her home near Alpha sneaking away from home to attend parties in 'The Big Woods' area. Often, to the embarassment of their parents, they'd be stranded overnight due to the treacherous route and extreme darkness of the journey back home again.
As you exit Golf Club Boulevard, the green to your left was the approximate location of the Rudisell blacksmith shop, one of over a dozen throughout the township. We’ll soon turn west toward N. Fairfield, but at the crest of the hill to your left was the location of the Harshman-Walters Cabin. This was the oldest structure in Beavercreek until destroyed by fire during restoration on November 23, 2004. Thought to have been originally owned by a member of the Harshman family, it was a 19’x17’ log building with a loft containing a porthole to lookout for Indians. It is believed that it had also been a toll gate house, which is how funding was raised to clear timber and construct roads.
Much of history is documented in obituaries and on headstones. Beavercreek has numerous cemeteries, large and small. One of the smaller, quaint ones is located just to the north of here off of Pascal Drive. A few images of the Reese-Petro cemetery follow...
1961 Description of Zimmerman - Zimmermansville about two miles west of Alpha on the Old Dayton and Xenia Pike had a blacksmith shop, grocery, school house and two Dunkard Churches. The railroad station is a quarter of a mile south of Zimmerman and is named Shoup’s Station.
Present Day - You’ll notice there’s no town of Beavercreek! The area generally referred to as ‘downtown’ was known as Zimmermansville. Later it was shortened to Zimmerman, and often called “Push on” for various, but unconfirmed reasons. Whether it was the train conductors asking riders if they were exiting the train at Shoup’s Station (near the 9-11 Memorial) or going to “Push on” to the next stop or earlier travelers between Dayton and Xenia stopping to water their horses prior to “Pushing On” to their destination – the name stuck.
The community was centered on the intersection of Dayton-Xenia Road and North Fairfield Road, but the mills and train station were to the south at the bottom of the hill near the location of the current Daytona Mill and Beavercreek Station on the Creekside Trail.
1961 Description of Alpha - Mr. John Harbine and Mr. Needles laid out the town of Alpha in 1854. When what is now the Pennsylvania railroad was built, Mr. Harbine gave land required and the station was named Harbine. It was a lively manufacturing center with its distillery, flour, cotton, woolen, grist, saw and oil mills, and did a large tobacco, grain, and shipping business to all parts of the country. From the first mill and the first barrel of flour which was marked "Alpha" the name has clung to the place. There are in the town a nice brick church, a school, a post office, coal office, two stores and at upper Alpha a K of P Hall, a blacksmith shop and Beavercreek Township High School built in 1888. The waters of Beaver Creek have turned the wheels of grist mills for more than a century and the old dam and old covered bridge torn down recently is an attractive place for picnics, fishing and swimming parties, but the block houses, mills, and store houses are no longer to be seen and the valley is peaceful, productive and beautiful.
Present Day - Alpha really became the hub of activity in Beavercreek Township. With its numerous mills and famous “panhandle” railroad lines running through town, industry was thriving for over 100 years! John Harbine (pictured, sometimes spelled Harbein) wasn’t the first businessman to prosper in Alpha, but he was the first to genuinely industrialize the town and literally had his hand in most aspects of business in the town including the original surveying and parceling. Mr. Harbine’s businesses included a saw mill, grist mill, flouring mill, an oil mill, and even a distillery! More on this later…
Throughout this work you’ll learn of Alpha’s memorable residents: Dr. Anderson, the town blacksmith - Charley Johannes, the General Store keeper – Mr. Needles, and even a notable villain named Justice! Alpha retains a great sense of pride with its own museum, grain elevator and the best post office in the county!
Students in grades K-8 will receive iPads with personalized content to support their individual academic growth
BEAVERCREEK, Ohio, Tuesday, December 17, 2013 – An innovative proposal from Beavercreek Schools that offers kindergarten through eighth grade students more targeted, personalized instruction is one of 24 projects that will receive grant money from the Straight A Fund established in the most recent state budget.
The Beavercreek Board of Education has voted to move from an all-day/alternating day kindergarten schedule to an allday/every day program effective August 2014. According to Ohio Department of Education data for Fiscal Year 2013*, 78 percent of public school districts and community schools in Ohio offer all-day/every day kindergarten. “We believe Beavercreek’s children should have access to the same high-quality educational opportunities as the majority of children in our state,” said Beavercreek Superintendent Bill McGlothlin, Ed.D. “Students that do not have access to all-day/every day programs are at a disadvantage because they receive half the instructional time and less opportunity for personalized, one-on-one interaction with teachers.” McGlothlin also notes that districts without all-day/every day kindergarten are responsible for reaching the same benchmarks for student achievement and growth over time as districts that offer such programs. “By moving to an all-day/every day schedule, we level the playing field for our kids and provide them with a stronger foundation,” he said.
