Antwerp, OH

Antwerp is a Paulding County village laid out in 1841 on the Maumee River, when General Horatio N. Curtis surveyed the town. Its early business district faced the Wabash & Erie Canal, with hotels, warehouses, wharves, and the nearby Six Mile Reservoir helping hold the canal’s water. The canal lasted only about a decade before railroads took over, and Antwerp’s business center moved north toward the tracks. Stave mills, a furnace company, and farm shipping followed. Antwerp is a northwest Ohio town whose map still shows the handoff from canal to railroad to agriculture.