[EXPLORE] Marblehead Mystery Solved!

In the Summer of last year I posted about the Marblehead Lighthouse and the surrounding area. The post can be read here. In that post my wife and I stumbled across some old ruins that appeared to be an old railway bridge of some sort.

I speculated that it was more than likely for interurban cars in the area, but had my doubts due to an old map having the route slightly West of the location we were at.

The red circle is where the ruins picture was taken and the solid black line is where the interurban ran. (Columbus Railroads)

As I was looking though an "Images of America" book regarding the Marblehead area I came across a chapter titled "Transportation" and found the picture below.

(Images of America)

As you can see, this confirms that there was in fact an interurban that went through downtown to the point of the peninsula. Ohlemacher's Dock no longer exists, but the train would have had to cut through the current park grounds in order to get to any dock located at the point.

(Google Maps)

The red dot at the top of this map is where the ruins were found. The light blue circle just South of that location is the tip of the peninsula and where Ohlemacher's Dock must have been. Downtown Marblehead is Northwest of both locations. Assuming that the auto road sits roughly where it always has and knowing that most interurbans ran on or alongside of roadways, I would say that what we found was most definitely part of the Toledo, Port Clinton and Lakeside Railway specified in the old map at the top of this post. The light green circle is where the tracks were extended to in 1922. As you can see, this would have been much closer for ferry trips to Sandusky, indicated by the purple circle.

So why is the old map off? I guess I should have figured it out way before considering one of my posts touched on this natural occurrence closer to home. Erosion.

(Ohio Division of Geological Survey)

As you can see in the (outdated, but useful) table above, Ottawa County on the lake side eroded 208 feet from 1877 to 1973 and another 27 feet from 1973 to 1990. It continues to erode at a rate of 1.6 feet per year, but due to man made break walls will more than likely be much slower than that now.

So there you go. Mystery solved. Are you excited? I know I am!

Thanks for reading!