On the Moraine, Part XVII

By Jim Thompson
HCP columnist

In the previous episodes in this series, I have led the reader to believe that everything on the McNary Farm was related to the olden days. That was true if you stayed on the ground at certain times. 

The McNary Farm is at one end of a branch of the pre-historic Teays River. From Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, it is 70 miles to the McNary Farm. At Mach 1, that is less than six minutes.

This piece of the Teays Valley was an Air Force test area. After all, as I stated, it was less than six minutes from Wright-Patterson. In the late 1950s to early '60s, it was a very convenient rural area to try out new things with the fighter jets. Breaking the sound barrier over land was not illegal in those days, and it was done quite regularly, I would say up to four or five times an hour.

When the Air Force started doing low-level testing, it was quite a show. They would come from Bainbridge, right down Ohio Route 41, and would be so low they would have to gain elevation to clear McNary Hill. I kid you not.

The sound barrier booms were deafening. One would think the old windows in the house were going to break, they would vibrate so much. And then they would be gone, and we would be back to the pre-World War II era on the ground.

When we were driving from Troy to the farm, somewhere north of Wilmington and south of Xenia, we would cross some nice farm fields. Along about 1958 or 1959, some surveyor stakes started appearing right in the middle of the corn fields, on either side of the road. A week or two later, the topsoil was scraped off, right through the corn fields.  

I asked what was going on. It was the beginning of the grading for I-71. The Interstate system had come to Clinton County.

We had seen similar signs in Troy. Interstate 75 was being built to the west around Troy. They unloaded the bridge beams they needed south of Troy on the New York Central tracks next to our house. It was quite a show. These beams were full length. They would load them on two semi-tractors. They had a little mount they put on the 5th wheels to bolt the beams to for transport.  

Then, one tractor would go forward and the other would go backward. It was a couple of miles down to the place where they were building the bridge, so that one driver had to go backward all the way. I don’t remember how many trips this was, but it was summertime and us kids would sit along the street watching them go by.

Note: Geologically, Ohio is roughly two states divided by a line that runs from Cincinnati to Cleveland. Sometimes, this line is thought to roughly follow the old “3C” highway or I-71. It veers quite widely from this line, particularly in Highland County. North and west of this line, the state is fairly flat and smooth, the result of the last glacier of the Ice Age. South and east of this line are the Appalachian foothills, undisturbed by glaciers. In most textbooks, this line is called the Terminal Moraine. Starting in the 1950s, my family acquired two farms. The first one, known as the McNary Farm, is located at the junction of Highland, Ross and Pike counties. The McNary Farm is clearly on the southeast side of the Terminal Moraine. The other farm, known as the Beaver Farm, is located on the north side of state Route 506 at the intersection of that highway and Franklin Branch, a creek which is clearly marked on the Highland County engineer’s map of today. The Beaver Farm is definitely on the northwest side of the Terminal Moraine.

Jim Thompson, formerly of Marshall, is a graduate of Hillsboro High School and the University of Cincinnati. He resides in Duluth, Ga. and is a columnist for The Highland County Press.