| Miami Township was founded in 1791. It's name is derived from the
Great Miami River, which is one of it's boundaries. The Township is comprised of 21
square miles in the southwestern tip of the state of Ohio. In 1791, the Court of General
Sessions set up three Townships in Hamilton County, one of which was Miami. At that
time it was much larger, including parts of present day Green, Delhi and Colerain
Townships. The present boundaries have been pretty much fixed since 1804.
Miami Township is an interesting combination of hills and valleys bordered on two sides
by the Ohio and Great Miami Rivers. The Tills that adorn the hilltops were for the
most part left by the Illinoisian Glacier which visited us about 350,000 thousand years
ago. This was the one that so drastically changed the drainage patterns of the Ohio
and Miami Rivers. Later, about 100,000 years ago the Wisconsin Glacier headed south,
stopping just short of Miami Township, but providing us with great deposits of gravel, now
found in the river valleys. The gravels were sorted and layered by the outwash as
the ice sheets retreated.
We do not know where the first human inhabitants of Miami Township lived, but it could
have been near the "Point", the juncture of the Great Miami and Ohio Rivers.
On the bluff in Shawnee Lookout Park there is an ancient fortification with a
calculated construction date of about 270 A.D. A nearby village site was excavated
by scientists from the University of Cincinnati some years ago. General William
Henry Harrison examined the fort at one time . |
