NAMING OF THESE STREAMS

Information from Jeff Pierce, Franklin Soil and Water Conservation District

CARHART DITCH

The first stream just north of SR 161 on the west side is identified as the Carhart Ditch in the stream resource geodatabase and includes Gale Run as a feeder in the headwaters. The Carhart Ditch was originally a county-petitioned tile in 1893 that showed up as a surface drainage project for the WPA in the late 1930s or early 1940s. It is not a named system in the Federal Board of Geographic Names database and was not a named system in the original Auditor’s primary or secondary hydrology files from 1997, but I believe that the name appeared on the historical drainage maps at the Franklin County Engineer’s office that were put together for the WPA projects and may have appeared in Franklin County Engineer’s field books and on some later landowner parcel books in the 1950s.

LINWORTH RUN/SMOKY ROW DITCH

The second stream just north on SR 161 on the west side is identified as Linworth Run in the stream resource geodatabase and includes the Smoky Row Ditch as a feeder in the headwaters. This is the stream that crosses under Whieldon Lane before it reaches the Olentangy River. It is not a named system in the Federal Board of Geographic Names database, but it is marked as Linworth Run on the Franklin County Road Map and Street Locator and was listed as Linworth Run in the original hydrography dataset from the Franklin County Auditor’s Office in 1995.

The USGS National Hydrography Database also shows the tributary listed as Linworth Run turning to the west and stopping at the railroad tracks south of Perry Park. The tributary that comes down through Perry Park has a county ditch petition history dating back to 1889 as the Smoky Row Ditch (the petitions also included a portion of what is now called Linworth Run down to the crossing at Linworth Road).

See the photo to the left showing the USGS NHD line (teal) branching to the west and to the railroad tracks. Everything above that branch is in the dataset as Smoky Row Ditch for the main tributary and Smoky Row Ditch watershed for the unnamed tributaries.

POTTERS CREEK

History: the Village of Elwood became Linworth at some point between 1910 and 1950, and both the Carhart Ditch and Linworth Run are very close to Linworth. A landowner named Ruth Potter also shows up as owning 61.31 acres south of Perry Park and west of Linworth Road that was turned into housing at some point in the past. Worthington may be using a local variant taken from the Potter family name, but the tributary is officially marked as Linworth Run on the County Engineer’s Road Map and in the Franklin County Auditor’s GIS system. The name Potters Creek does not appear in data from the late 1990s, so it may be a more recent local variant.

Information from Benjamin W. McCown, GIS Manager, Franklin County Engineer

We have found that the stream in question, running east into the Olentangy btw SR 161 and Pleasenton Dr is not Linworth Run (Linworth Run is north of Pleasenton Dr).

Unfortunately, we are not able to find a better name for the stream in question, yet.

Ditches are different than other streams in that they are engineered as opposed to naturally occurring. We name these projects sometimes for the person petitioning the work, sometimes for the area that it is located. This particular stream had a petition in 1893 known in our records as the Carhart Ditch. The 1872 township map also places the annotation “Ditch” in the same area, so there most likely was a petitioned project there before. Somehow that petitioned name was applied to the entire stream.

We see this in our bridge data set also, where this stream crosses under Linworth Rd and Olentangy River Rd.