Stop #13 | Address: 126 W. Third St., Port Clinton
Marker reads “Six miles east is the western boundary of ‘The Fire Lands’ given by Connecticut to its citizens for property destroyed by the British during the Revolution.” The marker was erected in 1930 by the Ohio Revolutionary Memorial Commission.
The ”Fire Lands” was located at the western end of the Connecticut Western Reserve and was intended as financial restitution for residents of Connecticut who had their homes burned in 1779 and 1781 by the British. The 500,000 acres covered nearly all of present-day Huron and Erie counties, Ottawa’s Danbury Township and a portion of Catawba Island Township.
The War of 1812 opened in the west with the British capturing the American Fort Detroit located on the banks of the Thames River in southwestern Ontario. William Henry Harrison, Governor of the Indiana Territory, was given command of the American forces and tasked with retaking the fort. By spring 1813, Harrison’s plan involved moving forces along five routes that would converge in northwestern Ohio on the Maumee and Sandusky Rivers. Beginning in Upper Sandusky, Harrison built small forts along his route north that served as storage depots for supplies as well as havens of safety. He would use the DeLery Portage, a centuries-old path between the Sandusky Bay and the mouth of the Portage River, to transport supplies to Lake Erie and later send men and munitions from Fremont’s Fort Stepehenson. American soldiers dragged boats overland on the two-mile course of what today is Fulton Street in Port Clinton.
Ten days after the Battle of Lake Erie, Harrison first traveled to Put-in-Bay (South Bass Island) then to Middle Sister Island and finally landed in Canada. In what became known as the Battle of Thames, Harrison defeated the British and Tecumseh was killed. Before embarking for Canada, Harrison built a brush fence extending across the peninsula about two miles wide from the mouth of the Portage River to the opposite mouth of the Sandusky River. There the American soldiers turned their horses loose. Returning from Canada, Harrison’s Kentucky and Ohio volunteers camped, gathered their horses and proceeded home.
About “Tracking the Troops, Tippecanoe & Perry, Too!” This driving tour is a five-county collaborative project with Wyandot, Seneca, Sandusky, Wood and Ottawa counties that takes you on a self-guided driving tour following the military trail of General William Henry Harrison during the War of 1812. Harrison would later become the ninth president of the United States and has the shortest presidency, dying from pneumonia one month after having taken the oath of office.
