Beaver Creek State Park

The Legend of Gretchen's Lock recounts that canal engineer Gill Hans brought his family from Holland to Ohio to work on the Sandy and Beaver Canal. His young daughter Gretchen pined for the Low Country and grew weak, contracting malaria. She died on August 12, 1838. According to the tradition collected by the Carnegie Public Library, Gill Hans temporarily entombed her coffin within the stonework of the lock he had engineered, intending to retrieve it on the family's return voyage to Holland. The family's ship is said to have gone down in an Atlantic storm with all hands. On the anniversary of Gretchen's death, walkers along the canal towpath have reported seeing a young Dutch girl beside the lock that bears her name. Local historians note that documentary support for the entombment is limited; the story persists as one of Ohio's most-told canal legends.

A second tradition recorded for the park is Esther Hale, the Bride at the Bridge, said to have been jilted on her wedding day in August 1837 and found dead in her cabin in Sprucevale four months later. Tradition holds that her white-gowned figure appears near the bridge and along the towpath, especially in late summer.

A third story, tied to one of the locks farther downstream, involves a young man's tragedy associated with the canal era. The park's combination of canal ruins, surviving stonework, and documented 19th-century village makes it one of Ohio's most-visited outdoor folklore sites.