Moxahala is a small hamlet located in the rolling hills of Southern Perry County in Southeastern Ohio. Surprisingly enough Moxahala was once a booming little community

The first settler was William Fowler who came here in 1814. At this time there was only one house between Moxahala and New Lexington.

The next settlers here were the Biddisons and Montgomerys. The first mill was built about 1817 by Franklin Harris.

Mrs. William Cavinee states that her late husband's great- great grandparents and parents came here from Pennsylvania. They settled in a hollow behind the present site of the elementary school. They chose this site due to the strong spring found there. The spring still runs today. Mrs. Cavinee was probably the towns most heard of citizen even though she only lived here a few years. Mrs. Cavinee lived to be 105, lived in three centuries She was born when Washington was president and died when McKinley was in office.

In 1842 a man named Biddison built a saw mill. It ran until 1852. In 1847 a Fowler also built a saw mill and it ran until 1867. The early settlers found out from the geologist who came through that the area was rich in minerals. A four foot vein of coal was found,a seven foot vein of iron ore and a vein of fire clay which was touted as the second best in the entire state.

In 1873 Moxahala was laid out by A,S. Biddison, with William Rich doing the surveying. Today each man has a street in Moxahala named after him. When the town was founded, it had two hotels, five stores and a population of 400 it also had a blast furnace.

According to a book published in 1902, Moxahala means elks horn in the Indian language. The town was named after the creek which starts just west of Moxahala It is said that the Indians thought that the banks of the creek looked like an elks horn. However some Moxahala residents say that it is named after two Indian chiefs,one named Moxie and one named Hala. This may be true as Mr. Paul Doughty states that as a boy in Moxahala he and his friends uncovered numerous Indian artifacts..

In the Perry County Atlas 1875 Moxahala was described as a busy little community with the following businesses; Doughty drugs and dry goods, Dolan's grocery, Kiener dry goods, grocery and bridle shop and a blast furnace owned and operated by the Carnegie Steel Company. A Moxahala Real Estate Company is shown to have owned land in the village at that time.

In 1883 Moxahala was described as a town on the Ohio Central Rail Road line with a post office, three general stores, two drug stores, two hotels and a blast furnace. This blast furnace was built in 1877 and went into blast on January 1, 1878. It employed 50 workers. It averaged 48 tons of iron per day, with a capacity of 58 tons a day. It was owned by King, Gilbert & Warner. It is assumed that the Carnegie blast furnace folded between 1875 and 1877.

A potter shop was built in 1880 and employed 10 workers. They manufactured 6,000 gallons per week, in December 1882 they doubled that amount. They entered the state fair and won the top prize in each category they entered their wares in. They cited the fact that all materials used in their pottery came from the Moxahala area and that the Moxahala fire clay was what gave their pottery the outstanding quality it exhibited.

Moxahala school at this time was a two room building. It was in the same location as the present school. It employed two teachers, Mr. Charles Wolfe recalls that he started the 1st grade in the two room school in 1895.

In 1897 the blast furnace shut down and moved to Columbus. The company had employed many of the towns workers. The company had built houses in Moxahala for its workers, the houses were all red and stood in rows. This area was called red row. None of these, as is true with the company houses built by the rail road, remain today. The workers we nt to Columbus and stayed with the company as they were highly skilled as iron workers,

When the people left so did the towns physicians. Doctor Hutchfield, Doctor Stoneburner and Doctor Snyder left. Another person who left was a young man named W. G. Teal. He too went to Columbus not to work for the iron company but to become a barber. He cut hair 4 years in Columbus. In 1901 he came back to Moxahala and opened a barber shop in town, In all he cut hair for 73 years. He has. been the subject of numerous articles and holds a number of barbering records. Now retired at age 94 he still enjoys good health.

In 1904 Moxahala came back to life. The Chapman mine opened about a mile west of Moxahala and people flocked to the area. The mine employed 500 men and built 200 houses near Moxahala, even so every shack and hut in Moxahala was used to house the workers. The mine yielded 2500 tons of coal per day. It was one of the top producing mines in the state at the time.

The town began to grow. A Doctor Brown and a Doctor Gaff opened offices here. At this time our town had the Kiener store, the Carrol store, the Sheppard store, two blacksmith shops, a meat market, a shoe repair shop, a pot shop, the White saloon and the Catchpool saloon.

In 1905 two men came down from Columbus and sold stock for a brick plant. The two men, named Mussler and Hecock, had the right locale for a brick plant. In Moxahala there was a strong vein of fire clay which was the second best fire clay in the state. Directly under this clay was a strong; vein of coal and a reservoir which had been built by the furnace company was near by. The brick plant was started. After all the stocks were sold and a few bricks were made Mussler and Hecock skipped town and the brick plant folded. Parts of the brick plant foundation still stands.The clay continued to be mined, it was crushed and loaded on trains and shipped to Shawnee. The Claycraft Company used this clay as it was superior to any clay they had.

During this time some of the men worked at the Kiener saw mill in the warm months and for Kiener Tee Company in the winter months. The men cut blocks of ice from the creek and reservoir and stored them in a building with saw dust from their saw mill for use in the summer.

When the people were not working they could spend their time hunting, fishing, or trapping as game was plentiful in the area. They could swim in the creek or reservoir in the summer. There was skating and sled-ding in the winter. There was a pool room, saloons, a dance hall and a live theater above the Kiener store building where local residents could display their acting talents. There was a Grange society and a Knights of Phythias lodge here during that period of time.

The people could attend church services in either of the towns churches The Methodist church was the first church in Moxahala. It was built in 1885 after a revival was held at a blacksmith shop. The beautiful Spanish styled Catholic church, St. Pius, was built in 1908 after the Catholic church near Moxahala was destroyed by fire. Both churches still function in the same locations they were built on.

At this the Kiener store was the most important building in town. Besides serving as a store, dance hall, and theatre . It was the post office, telephone switch board station and had the first gasoline pumps in town.

In 1914 the Chapman mine closed. However in 1914 the Kaiser mine opened The Ohio Central and The White Elm mine also opened up here during World War I. This proved to be the last boom for Moxahala.

Around this time a gas company was formed in Moxahala, with controlling interest being held by Mr. Carrol and Mr. Kiener, both of whom were local merchants. Mr. Kiener later assumed total control of the company. In 1926 the company was valued at $3,410.00 according to volume II of Southeastern Ohio and The Muskingum Valley. The company ran until the fifties when customers complained about the irregularity of the amount of gas reaching the homes. This was due to the fact that the gas lines had no regulator on them. The Public Utilities Commission intervened and ordered the company to stop service. Since then Moxahala has been left with no natural gas supplier.

After World War I ended the mines began to close and people began to leave. The two doctors left, the two grist mills closed, as did the two blacksmith shops. The saloons were forced to close because of prohibition But this led to the invention of the speakeasy, and yes even Moxahala had these.

It is said that the favorite speakeasy in Moxahala was the drug store owned and operated by Jack Noe. He was once a telegrapher and if one rapped the counter a certain number o£ times he was ushered into a back room where drinks and cards awaited. At that time it was said to have been one of the busiest establishments in town.

In the early twenties the only jobs were at the Kiener saw mill, on the railroad or farming. Enough people did stay to merit the construction of a new school in Moxahala. It was built on the same site as the two room school it replaced. Construction began in 1923 and was complete ed and opened to classes in 1924. ed

In 1932 the railroad depot at Moxahala closed. Jobs were scarce in Moxahala during the thirties as they were across much of the nation. Many men left Moxahala and went to work in the cities or on Works Progress administration jobs. Some came back while some were never heard from again.

During World War II the Brownfield Mining Company opened the old Ohio Central Mine. This employed some of the area's workers . The coal also served in the war effort. It closed shortly after the war ended.

Shortly after the war ended a monument was erected at the foot of The Moxahala school house hill to honor the men who served with the armed forces during World War II and had resided in Pleasant Township when they went into the service. The monument still stands.

In 1953 Moxahala had a population of 240. It had a combination grocery & hardware, two gas stations, a combination gas station & grocery and a post office.

In 1964 the Kiener store closed after 90 years of serving the community. In 1965 the Peabody Coal Company began to strip mine the coal in and n ear Moxahala. The damage done is still quite evident. After they finished stripping the coal, Peabody, opened a deep mine at Moxahala. This led to an increase in the population of Moxahala as most of the miners were not this area.

In 1975 the town received a trailer to serve as a post office. The new post office is beside the building which had formerly served as the post office,

Today Moxahala is bisected by Route 13, which was built in 1912 as a county road, and nicknamed the Water Bound Pike. Moxahala has two churches, a post office, an elementary school, a gas station, an under ground coal mine and a sharpening service. Moxahala also has a construction company and a mining company.

Moxahala has come from an area which was home only to the Indian to a place which became the home of William Fowler in 1814. It be-came a town in 1873. It has seen the good times when it was a boom town and the hard times yet it survived. What the future of Moxahala will be only time will tell,

Sources; _

The Perry County Atlas 1875

The History of Perry County 1902

The Perry County Atlas 1909

Mr. W. G. (Barber) Teal

Mrs. William Cavinee

Mr. & Mrs. Charles Wolfe

Mr. & Mrs. Paul Doughty

Southeastern Ohio and The Muskingum Valley Vol. I

The History of Fairfield & Perry County 1883