Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 7).djvu/167

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MISSISSIPPI BASIN
163

Auglaize, and Miami rivers. Here, near the mouth of Loramie Creek, English traders erected a trading station almost contemporaneous with Céloron's journey; from their point of vantage the French drove them away, and here the earliest French store was built. This stood near the mouth of the creek in Miami County (Ohio) while sixteen miles up the creek at the beginning of the shortest portage was the location of famed Loramie's Store of later date and known to half a continent for half a century. The carrying place across to Girty's town (George not Simon Girty) was five miles to what is now St. Marys, Shelby County on the St. Mary River. Toward this point Harmar and Wayne both struck in 1790 and 1794, Wayne building Fort Loramie at that end of the portage path mentioned. A stone raised near the mouth of Loramie Creek was one of the corner stones of the old Indian treaty line mentioned in the treaties of Fort Stanwix (1784), Fort McIntosh (1786), Fort Harmar (1789) and Greenville (1795). Loramie Creek was known thereby as the "Standing Stone fork of the Great Miami." One of