Gahanna: Three Creeks into One

Gahanna takes its name from a Native American word for the confluence of three creeks into one , the Big Walnut Creek junction that defined the landscape here long before European settlement. John Clark founded the town in eighteen forty-nine on eight hundred acres along the Big Walnut, building saw and grist mills powered by the creek's flow. A neighboring settlement called Bridgeport was founded a few years later, and the two merged in the eighteen eighties when Gahanna incorporated as a village.

For most of the twentieth century Gahanna was a small community northeast of Columbus. The postwar suburban expansion of Columbus eventually reached it, and Gahanna grew into a mid-sized city of about thirty-five thousand. The city seal still carries the inscription "Three in One," honoring the confluence name that Native people gave this land. The old millrace area along Big Walnut Creek has been preserved as Creekside, a park and entertainment district at the center of downtown.