Good Morning, Springboro! Clear Creek

Clear Creek is one of many picturesque small streams in the vicinity of Springboro, Ohio, which is named for the presence of numerous springs. Clear Creek meanders toward Franklin and the Great Miami River. Country roads crisscross it, offering scenic views from many a low bridge.

Clear Creek Near Springboro, Ohio

Original Watercolor Painting by Robert T. Rhode

The waters of Clear Creek flow near the giant sycamore that is the subject of another of my original watercolor paintings featured in this blog series. (See “Good Morning, Springboro! The Giant Sycamore.”) I love the ochre tones of the creek bed that echo the ochre patches in the bark and the ochre tints in the leaves and seed heads of the sycamores that line the banks. As the stream is shallow, peninsulas of white gravel protrude here and there amid the rippling water. In the summer sunshine, these pebbly bars have a barely discernible pink tint.

After a hard rain, Clear Creek deepens and fairly roars. It can even rise from its banks and spread across the road near the park. At those times, crews must put up barricades until the stream returns to its normal channel. On a typical July day, the sparkling water sings a merry song that soothes jangled nerves.

One of the townships of Warren County is named Clearcreek; it features the towns of Five Points, Pekin, Red Lion, Ridgeville, and Springboro. Five Points is hardly a town but more accurately a location where five roads meet (almost). It boasts the highest point of land in the county. Pekin, Red Lion, and Ridgeville truly are communities, each with fascinating stories to tell; for example, Red Lion was so named in the stage coach days for a public house and inn sporting a sign depicting a lion, and Ridgeville was the boyhood village of John McLean (1785–1861), who was a Supreme Court justice that wisely dissented in the shameful Dred Scott decision. (McLean also served in Congress and as U.S. Postmaster General.) Ridgeville is memorably described in William Henry Venable’s autobiographical book entitled Buckeye Boyhood. Venable was a noted educator, well versed in many fields and chairing departments of English at Hughes High School and at Walnut Hills High School in Cincinnati. His granddaughter Evelyn Venable was a Hollywood actress who portrayed Shirley Temple’s mother in The Little Colonel. The iconic Columbia Pictures woman with the gleaming torch was Evelyn, who has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. After her acting career, she taught classical Greek and Latin at UCLA and assisted with productions of plays from the same time period.

For far longer than the centuries stretching from the stage coach era until today, Clear Creek has shimmered and murmured, twinkled and babbled, glimmered and trickled. As you gaze upon it, you can easily imagine how, before the pioneers arrived, Miami and Shawnee people deeply appreciated the stream. I recall a resident of the area telling me that, when he was a boy, he found Native American artifacts that had been unearthed by the ever-flowing waters of Clear Creek.

If you would like to purchase one of my paintings from this blog series, send me a message through my website at roberttrhode.org or via Facebook.