Loveland

To my eyes, Loveland may be the prettiest town on the whole river. It is, at least, the one who's made the biggest attempt to embrace it's heritage as a river town. Indeed even though the bikeway runs the length of the river, Ive heard several people refer to it as the Loveland bike path. And no wonder, since here, restaurants, ice cream shops, bike shops, coffee and tea shops, and the LMI Scenic River & Trail Center line the trail thru town. Right in town at the mouth of Obannon Creek may not be the best place to start your fishing adventures on the Little Miami. Not because it's not fishy looking but because it's crawling with kids wading, dog's fetching, and people just generally enjoying the river. Upstream at the first riffle before the really deep water begins will allways be special to me, for here I lost the biggest smallmouth I've ever hooked. It was late fall when the bass hit a grub and jumped clean out of the water giving me a good look at it's size. I had the big bass on long enough to be sure I was going to land it when the line just went slack. No theatrics just a slack line and no fish. A few kids were watching from downstream and it was all I could do not to throw a mini hissyfit in midstream. Not that it would have helped any. I won't say what I thought the bass weighed so I won't be called a liar, let's just call it very large.

Loveland is named after James Loveland, who ran a store and post office near the railroad tracks downtown. Loveland was promoted by the railroad as a resort town, who gave it the nickname "Little Switzerland of the Miami Valley." In the 1920s, The Cincinnati Enquirer ran a promotion that offered a free plot of land in Loveland, along the Little Miami River, after paying for a one-year subscription to the paper!The Enquirer also plays a role in the creation of Loveland's most famous attraction, Château Laroche, or just simply, The Loveland Castle. The Castle is a huge replica of a medievel castle built on the Little Miami by Harry Andrews starting in 1929. Harry was a boy scouts leader and spent a lifetime adding to the castle. The Castle is built on two free lots of land that his scouts obtained by selling one-year subscriptions to The Cincinnati Enquirer. It's amazing and worth a trip in it's own right to see. And like any good castle it is supposedly haunted. Speaking of hauntings and the paranormal, I allmost forgot to mention that mythical monster that haunts the Little Miami along here, the fearsome Loveland Frog or maybe lizard depending on who you talk to, though the most popular version has the monster as the Loveland Frog. A barely huminoid creature with green skin all bumpy and hideous like (you guessed it) a frog! Oh and bulging eyes and a huge frog mouth too.

According to Wikipedia:
"The first claimed sighting was in May 1955. A businessman is said to have seen three or four 3-foot (0.91 m)-tall frog-faced creatures squatting under a bridge near Loveland. They were described as having wrinkles instead of hair on their heads, lopsided chests, and wide mouths without lips, like frogs. One of them is said to have held up a bar device that shed sparks. A strong odor of alfalfa and almonds was reportedly left behind."

So there you have it, it's on the internet so it has to be true. The fearsome frog has been seen off and on ever since, even to the point of being shot at by the police as it fled back into it's home, the Little Miami. And (yes there's more) the frog even has it's own page on Monsterquests the TV shows own website and a google search turns up around 100,000 results, more proof positive that the slimy reptilian haunts the waters of the Little Miami. The Miami Indians and their allies the Shawnee that lived along the Little Miami also had a legend about the Shawnahooc or “River Demon” that lived along the river who just happened to look alot like a lizard or frog. Coincidence? I think not. And while it may be okay to keep a few crappies or channel cats for dinner, Shawnahooc, I've heard, is fond of the river's smallmouth and you run the risk of invoking his wrath if you keep any smallmouth. I dunno, something about it taking three or four years for a smallmouth to mature and recruitment and conserving the resource. It sounds to me like it's best to release all smallmouth from the river just to be safe.


On a more serious note Loveland was very hard hit by the great flood of 1913 with several old bridges washed away. Some of the most graphic photos of the horrific 1913 flood that exist are of Loveland including those you see here.