Middleport, OH

Middleport is Meigs County's largest village, set where Leading Creek meets the Ohio River. The first settlers came down from Marietta by flatboat in 1798 and built the Leading Creek Settlement; later names such as Vinton, Sheffield, Tarker's Landing, and Coalport were folded into the village's unusual street map. Sheffield's cotton and flour mills, German furniture businesses, and river traffic helped make Middleport a stop on the Ohio, while the name eventually pointed to its position between Cincinnati and Pittsburgh.

The village's history has a serious edge. Before the Civil War, one of Meigs County's busiest Underground Railroad routes ran up Leading Creek, and the village later resisted John Morgan's Confederate raiders at Middleport Hill. The Hobson Railroad Yard, roundhouse, repair shops, and streetcar line added another transportation layer. Today the marina puts people back on the water, with paddling routes up Leading Creek and down to the Ohio River, while Meigs Local Schools serve the village. Middleport is a river-and-creek town with a long memory: flatboats, factories, freedom seekers, rail crews, and school buses all following the same narrow valley.