Peebles: Where Zane's Trace Met the Rails

The small Adams County town of Peebles sits at what was once a meaningful crossroads in Ohio. Zane's Trace, the first road opened through the state, passed through this area in seventeen ninety-six, cut by Ebenezer Zane under a congressional land grant. For decades it was the main overland route connecting Wheeling, West Virginia, to Limestone, Kentucky, carrying settlers, livestock, and mail across the young frontier.

Peebles itself was platted in eighteen eighty-one by Isaiah Custer, at the junction of Zane's Trace and the newly arrived Cincinnati and Eastern Railway. It was incorporated in eighteen eighty-six and named for John G. Peebles. David Nixon built the first house, which later became the Nixon Hotel. The town was lively enough to host Chautauqua assemblies between nineteen oh six and nineteen seventeen, those traveling tent meetings of lectures, music, and civic debate that brought outside ideas deep into rural America. The rails are gone now, but Peebles endures as a quiet Adams County town in the old trace country.