Leesburg, Ohio: Highland County's Quiet Village

Leesburg is a small village in Highland County in south-central Ohio, situated in the gently rolling terrain between the Little Miami and Paint Creek drainages. Highland County played a meaningful role in the Underground Railroad: its position just north of the Ohio River made it a transit corridor for freedom seekers crossing into Ohio from Kentucky, and a number of homes in the county sheltered people moving north toward Canada or Black settlements in the interior. Abolitionist networks were active throughout the region in the decades before the Civil War.

Highland County is also known for its covered bridges , the Lynchburg Covered Bridge, built by local builder John Gregg in December of eighteen seventy, is one of Ohio's surviving covered bridges and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Leesburg itself holds an annual festival celebrating the community's rural character. The county seat, Hillsboro, lies roughly ten miles to the southwest.