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Strategically located along the entire length of the Ohio-Erie Canal were eleven toll houses at Cleveland, Akron, Massillon, Canal Dover, Roscoe, Newark, Carrol, Circleville, Waverly, and Portsmouth. Each canal boat was required to pay a toll or fee for use of the canal. The per-mile rate of the toll was usually in the form of pennies or mills, per weight or container. The Canal Dover Toll House was situated just east of this location between the canal and the Tuscarawas River.
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The Stockport Mill, the third on this site since 1842, was built in 1906 by the Dover brothers. Using a pair of 40-inch Leffel turbines, it harnessed water power for both milling and generating electricity for the town. Known for its Gold Bond, Seal of Ohio, and Pride of the Valley refined flours, the Stockport Milling Company shipped its products by steam packet boat and over the Ohio & Little Kanawha Railroad before the era of all-weather roads. The mill also functioned as a community hub where local farmers obtained supplies and shared news. It ceased operation as a feed mill in 1997.
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David Stearns, the first permanent settler, built a log cabin near this site on the “ridge” (Lorain Road) in 1816. Stearns was given this land by his father, Elijah, who had bought 1,002 acres from the Olmsted family. This area of North Olmsted was first called Kingston, renamed Lennox in 1823, and Olmsted in 1829. In 1827, Stearns donated his cabin to the community to be used as the first schoolhouse. In 1852 the cabin was moved to Butternut and Dover Center and continued to serve as a school.
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The Zoarville Station Bridge is a rare survivor of the earliest period of iron bridge construction in the United States, an era when unprecedented railroad expansion gave American bridge builders an international reputation for innovation. German immigrant Albert Fink first developed this truss design for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad in the early 1850s. Charles Shaler Smith, a prominent civil engineer and Fink’s former assistant, designed the bridge with patented features that improved on Fink’s original design. His firm, Smith, Latrobe & Company of Baltimore, Maryland, built this example in 1868 as a highway bridge over the Tuscarawas River in Dover. It was moved to this site in 1905 and abandoned in 1940. The Lebold family donated the bridge to the Camp Tuscazoar Foundation in 1997 for preservation and restoration. Of the hundreds of Fink Truss bridges built in the mid-1800s, the Zoarville Station Bridge is the last of its kind known to exist.
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Jeremiah Reeves was born in England in 1845 and began his career in the mills of Wales, United Kingdom, at the age of ten. In 1867, he immigrated to the United States where he worked in the steel mills of Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Connellsville, Pennsylvania. He met his wife Jane Rees in the latter place and they married in 1869. In 1883, Reeves acquired a steel rolling mill in Dover for $14,000. Despite a history of financial difficulties, the Reeves Iron Works would go on to expand several times and employ over 800 men. The iron works and later the Reeves Manufacturing Company established Dover as an industrial center during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
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The American Sheet and Tin Plate Company founded the first Dover Public Library for the benefit of its employees at the corner of Front Street and Factory Street in 1902. Five years later, the library moved to a residence on Cherry and Fifth Streets. In 1916 the city dismantled “the old Downey residence” and built a high school in its place, with the public library occupying the basement. In 1934, the library moved to a converted residence at 417 North Walnut Street. Over time, however, the building became inadequate to house this beloved institution. In 1953 the city of Dover passed a bond issue to build a new library for the community. The new building, located at this site, opened in 1955.
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Laid out in 1814, Lakeside Cemetery became the first public burying ground in Dover Township, an area that now includes Bay Village, Westlake, and the northern portion of North Olmsted. Reuben Osborn (1778-1860) arrived in Dover on October 10, 1810, but returned to New York. He settled on this land with his wife Sarah Johnson Osborn (1779-1856) and family in 1811, later purchasing most of the plot where the cemetery would be established from Philo Taylor. Sarah’s sister, Rebecca Porter, and her infant son were the first to be buried here; they were killed when their boat capsized at the mouth of the Rocky River in 1814. Including land purchased in 1877, the cemetery currently spans half an acre. Although not recorded until 1879, there are over 270 known burials. Among those interned here are veterans from the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, and World War I.
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Christian Deardorff (1781-1851) with his brother-in-law Jesse Slingluff (1775-1836) platted and founded Dover and built the area’s first gristmill on Sugar Creek. With the coming of the Ohio and Erie Canalto Dover, Deardorff lobbied successfully to make Dover a toll stop for the canal and the be afforded a source of water power for his mill. A dam built on Sugar Creek obstructed for the mill there. Deardorff received access to the canal near Tuscarawas Avenue, and there erected a mill, later named the Cascade Mill by the Hardesty brothers when they purchased it in 1872. The Hardestys, from Carroll County, came to Dover in the 1860s and began operating a large mill on the Calico Ditch, near the foot of 2nd Street. The Dover Milling Company bought the last Hardesty-owned mill in 1951.
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