Do you remember Lake Morgan? (Another Rathole for Public Money)

Decision of the State Department of Natural Resources to abandon the Lake Morgan project on Wolf Creek in Union Twp. will meet with few regrets.

With the ever-present spector of the flood of that fateful night of June 16th, 1950, in mind, residents of lower Wolf Creek have heard the news with deep sighs of relief. The whole project was illy chosen and illy carried to conclusion.

There was no particular reason, in the beginning, governing this location. Those of us who, for years, have wanted Morgan County to have a lake and dam on Oil Spring or Island Run, both wildly beautiful and "a natural" for permanent preservation to all of the people of Ohio, were not consulted. Few in Morgan County, other than inside party hacks, knew anything about it.

The location was political and those who have consistently fought for conservation and preservation of the out-of-doors were ignored in its choosing. Aside from that, Burr Oak dam and lake, upon which four and a half million have been expended, are, but a few miles beyond Lake Morgan. Certainly, that will eventually supply sufficient brush and water to satiate the craze of hunters and fishermen for a playground.

Again, as an engineering proposition, certainly it could have been foreseen that a tremendous area of drainage lies at the headwaters of the Morgan Dam, and one, by nature, peculiarly susceptible to the menace of any unusual rainfall.

It has been charged that the dam was not properly constructed. We do not know whether or not these charges have been true. It is doubtful if any dam, no matter how well constructed, would have withheld the torrent of water originating in the cloudburst during the night when it gave way.

Be that as it may, at least $150,000 of public money is poured down the drain and sunk beyond recall. That amount would have gone far toward buying sufficient land from Oil Spring and the area between that and Island Run, for one of the finest recreational sites in Ohio - and which would have utilized to advantage several thousands of acres of land now largely unproductive.

The Morgan dam was intended to be a 152-acre fishing lake, but drained an area of 29 square miles and that was too much!