Dover, Ohio
Near Berlin, Ohio
Dover, tucked along Sugar Creek in Tuscarawas County, was platted in eighteen oh seven by Christian Deardorff and his brother-in-law Jesse Slingluff. The two men had scouted the land five years earlier, bought a four-thousand-acre tract, and built the valley's first grist and sawmill. The Ohio and Erie Canal arrived in eighteen twenty-nine and triggered a small industrial revolution: blast furnaces rose on West Third Street, a steel-rolling mill opened in eighteen sixty-seven, and the town earned the nickname Canal Dover.
The canal made Dover a transit hub for iron, grain, and coal pouring out of the hill country to the south. Today it is the county seat of Tuscarawas County and the gateway to Ohio's Amish heartland.
