A 1944 Nickel Plate booklet called Bellevue ‘the city without any sewers’
The railroad's guide to towns on its line described Bellevue's rail yards, its limestone and the sinkholes that drained the town.
In August 1944 the Nickel Plate Road published a promotional booklet, A Long Line, describing the Ohio towns along its tracks, their industries, resources and history. Bellevue got a section of its own.
A railroad town
The booklet noted that Bellevue was named in 1839 by James H. Bell, who was then building the Mad River and Lake Erie Railroad south from Sandusky. In 1944 four railroads served the city: the Nickel Plate, the Wheeling and Lake Erie, the Pennsylvania and the New York Central. The Nickel Plate had a division point here, where refrigerator cars, the “reefers” that carried produce and meat, were re-iced. The railroad was the city’s largest employer.
No sewers needed
The booklet repeated a local boast: Bellevue was “the city without any sewers.” The town sits on a belt of soluble limestone about 12 miles wide that runs south from Lake Erie for nearly 50 miles. Water widens cracks in the rock into underground channels, so the land has sinkholes and little surface drainage. Water from as far south as the divide flows north underground and comes up in large springs at Millers Pond, Green Springs and Castalia, where the Blue Hole delivered about 5,000 gallons a minute.
Farmers and city residents drilled holes into the rock to drain fields and get rid of waste. That practice later caused groundwater pollution, and Bellevue has since built a sanitary sewer system. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources maps the region’s karst.
See our stories on the Castalia Blue Hole, Seneca Caverns and the Mad River & NKP Railroad Museum. More in Farm & Rail.