In the 1820s, at a time when a portion of the Miami and Erie Canal carved its way through the western region of the township, mule-drawn canal boats were used to move travelers and commercial goods to and from major Ohio cities including Cincinnati, Middletown, Dayton and later Toledo.

Over time the dirt roads were transformed into paved turnpikes, tracing what would ultimately become many of today’s familiar concrete expressways, highways, streets and roads.Īs the networks and modes of transportation continued to improve, villages sprouted up inside all sections of West Chester Township’s 35-square mile border. They cleared land for homes and gardens and did what they could to survive. Pioneers hiked the time-tested trails either by foot or on horseback, as weather allowed, until the dirt paths could be widened to accommodate wagons. They were attracted here in the late 1700s by the quality and beauty of the land.

The first settlers in West Chester were largely German, Irish and English. European missionaries, explorers, hunters, traders, surveyors, scouts and marching military units traversed the very same trails as early as the mid-1600s. Native American tribes adopted the buffalo trails for hunting and foraging in the 17th and 18th centuries. Paths were stamped out by herds of American bison and indigenous species that roamed the wild land from one watering place to the next. Primitive versions of these modern routes existed well before colonial America and its westward expansions. Key in those early days were two major north-south thoroughfares still with us today: US Route 42 (Cincinnati-Columbus Road) and Cincinnati-Dayton Road.

Like many emerging communities on the frontier of the Northwest Territory at the turn of the 19th century, West Chester sprang up and was spurred on by access to transportation. The community was first named Union Township. Planted in fertile soil and cultivated from humble beginnings, West Chester took root in southeast Butler County, Ohio in 1823.

Union township oh