Lewistown Reserve
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Lewistown Reservoir

Lewistown Reserve, also, Lewistown Reservoir. . , Lewistown Reserve. The United States negotiated the Treaty of Fort Meigs with several Native American nations in 1817. It opened northwest Ohio to American settlers and established reservations for the remaining Indigenous residents. The Shawnee and an allied group of Seneca lived in the 40,300-acre Lewistown Reserve that included what is today Indian Lake State Park. The reserve's primary settlement, Lewistown, was named for Shawnee leader Quatawapea (called Colonel Lewis by Americans). Facing encroaching settlers, tribespeople signed the Treaty of Lewistown in 1831 which sold this land to the U.S. Today, their descendants are the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma., Lewistown Reservoir. What is today Indian Lake was once a series of kettle lakes that formed as glaciers retreated between 35,000 and 11,700 years ago. These ponds became a 1,000-acre canal feeder lake named Lewistown Reservoir following the completion of a dam in 1851. Water pooled here could be released into the Great Miami River to maintain adequate water levels in the Miami and Erie Canal. Railroads replaced canals as Ohio's transportation arteries by the late 1800s. Senate Bill 29 turned the former reservoir into a public recreation area named Indian Lake in 1898. Indian Lake State Park opened in 1949 following the establishment of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.