SPRING VALLEY TOWNSHIP

     This township was organized in 1856 from Sugar Creek, Caesar's Creek, and Xenia Townships.  It is fertile, containing much bottom land, and is second only to Sugar Creek in tobacco production.
     SPRING VALLEY, its chief town is situated on the broad, level plain surrounded by the labyrinth of hills.  The settlement, originally called Transylvania and consisting only of several houses, a general store, and the tavern and stage station of Jeffrey Truman, was on the west bank of the river, but with the construction of the Panhandle Railroad in 1845 the population shifted to its present center under the eastern range of hills.
     Among the first industries were the pork packing and shipping company of Byrd & Walton, Barret's Woolen Mill, Dougherty's linseed oil mill, and the large cooper shop of Giles Kinney.  At present Spring Valley has a population of 700 (official, in 1900. 522).  It has a flouring mill, two saw mills, a canning factory, a concrete block factory, three blacksmith shops, a national bank (surplus $60,000), a hotel, two restaurants, a poultry shipping house, two barber shops, and seven stores.  Spring Valley's springs are its proudest possession.  There are said to be fourteen different kinds of water within a radius of two miles.  From one spring gushes a stream of water seven inches in diameter.  "Magnetic" water flows from a pipe that was drilled for oil, while within ten inches of it strong medicinal water with no magnetic quality is ejected intermittently by the force of its own gas.  This water comes from 1450 feet below the surface; it has about the same density as sea water and its chief constituents are common salt and Epsom salts.
     There are three churches in Spring Valley:  the Methodist Episcopal (which in 1907 erected a new $8,000 church of concrete blocks), the Methodist Protestant, and the Friends'.  A new school and high school building was also built of concrete blocks in 1907.
     CLAYSVILLE, or ROXANNA, as it is now called, is a shipping point on the P. C. C. & St. L. Railroad.  It is about two miles below Spring Valley, and the population is about 30.

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SPRING VALLEY.
M. E. Church. - Main Street - Walnut Street - (Photo by Rosa E. Johnson)
View from the Mound.

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     NEW BURLINGTON, 9 miles south of Xenia, has its northern section in Spring Valley Township, but the larger part of it lies in Clinton County.

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