“First came the railroad, and then came the town.”
The story of Crestline started in 1850, when railroads had only been present in Ohio for fewer than 20 years, and in Crawford County for under ten years. The Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati railroad -- or the “Bee Line,” as it would come to be called until merging with the Big Four system in 1889 -- needed to construct a 13-mile route between Shelby and Galion. However, Crestline was not the first choice of railroad officials; it did not even exist at the time!
Bucyrus was the first site investigated, but local leaders there were more interested in building a wagon road from Sandusky to Columbus. The officials’ next choice was Mansfield, but the citizens there had recently financed a road to Newark and were not interested in funding a railroad. The next consideration was Leesville, but its residents feared that the railroad would take business from many of the citizens there who made their living hauling stone for the Leesville Stone Quarry.
This left the railroad with no choice but to run the line through open country. At the time, no town existed between Shelby and Galion, so it was decided that a station – which was called Vernon Station – should be placed at the halfway point for passenger convenience, where the line crossed Leesville Road.
Surveys were begun in 1850 and construction work started in February of 1852. The railroad was opened for service November 1, 1854.
In tandem with these developments, a man named Thomas C. Hall constructed a building near the station, which served as the community’s first post office. Here Hall lived, ran a general store, and served as the village’s first postmaster. (This structure was locally known as the ‘Bauer Building’ for many years, until it was lost in a fire in 1949.)
Soon after the construction of Vernon Station, the area around Hall’s building was platted as a village called Livingston. Early settlers of the area around Livingston believed that the village was situated on the watershed of the state, where streams to the north emptied into Lake Erie and those to the south emptied into the Ohio River, so the area became known as ‘Crest Line.’ Despite the eventual debunking of the watershed misconception, the name stuck and eventually became one word.
The Village of Crestline was officially platted in the 1860s, absorbing Livingston and Vernon Station.
Crestline now thrives from the various businesses and industries located in the village, but it is still considered a railroad community; the two crossing railroads that spawned the village remain active to this day. Local residents and elected officials are currently collaborating with Amtrak to restore passenger rail service, cementing Crestline’s status as “the hub of Ohio.”
