Question: What is underground and in plain sight?
Answer: A station of the Underground Railroad—one of the few in Richland County still standing since its period of history before the Civil War.
More than 150 years ago, before the Civil War, when United States still had slavery in the Southern States, there was a secret network of humanitarian activists in the Northern States who took it upon themselves to make it possible for escaping slaves make their way to freedom in Canada. This organization came to be known as the Undergound Railroad.
One of these men was Samuel McCluer, and his home and ‘station’ of the Underground Railroad are among the few left in existence today. It can be seen north of Lexington on Gass Road, below the dam of the Clear Fork Reservoir.
When he was living there in the 1840s-70s there was, of course, no dam in his back yard. In his lifetime that was fertile bottom land in the Clear Fork River valley, and he used his fields, now underneath the lake, to grow corn.
His home was on the outskirts of a little crossroads village called Troy Settlement, now long gone. The last remnant of the settlement—the church graveyard—can be seen today not far from McCluer’s home near the intersection of Gass Road and State Rt. 97.
For more background on this site check out Sam McClure and his cornfield
