COLUMBUS HAS A TUTTLE PROBLEM

Top of Mind

A Tail Of Two Tuttles

At some point, “Tuttle” stopped sounding like a person and started sounding like a section of Columbus.

Tuttle Park. Tuttle Pool. Tuttle Recreation Center. Tuttle Park the neighborhood.

Then head northwest, and you get Tuttle Road, Tuttle Crossing Boulevard and, of course, The Mall at Tuttle Crossing.

You would be forgiven for assuming one wildly successful Tuttle family once owned half the city.

They did not.

In fact, Columbus appears to have two completely different Tuttle stories that somehow ended up sharing the same map.

TUTTLE NO. 1: THE SPORTSWRITER

The Tuttle behind Tuttle Park was George Clyde Tuttle, a Columbus newspaperman who arrived here in 1906 to work as a court reporter for the Ohio State Journal.

He had previously worked in sports journalism in Springfield and eventually found his way back to the sports desk in Columbus, where he became one of the city’s best-known sportswriters.

And Clyde Tuttle may have played a small but fascinating role in Ohio State football history.

In the late 1920s, Ohio State was reportedly trying to convince legendary Notre Dame coach Knute Rockne to come coach the Buckeyes.

The talks were supposed to remain secret.

Tuttle found out.

Tuttle published it.

Once the negotiations became public, the deal fell apart, and Rockne stayed at Notre Dame.

So there is a legitimate chance that Tuttle Park is named after the Columbus sportswriter who helped keep one of the most famous coaches in college football history from coming to Ohio State.

That is one way to get your name on a park.

Tuttle died in 1929, but Columbus clearly remembered him. Within a few years, city records were referring to the area as Clyde Tuttle Field, and the city continued acquiring land around it.

Today his name survives on the park, pool, recreation center and surrounding neighborhood.

Case closed.

Except there is still that whole other Tuttle.

TUTTLE NO. 2: SOME GUY WITH A FARM

Tuttle Crossing has nothing to do with Clyde.

An 1880 history of Franklin County describes an early settler named Alexander Bassett clearing land roughly a mile southwest of Dublin before selling it to a man identified only as “Mr. Tuttle.”

That location puts the property near the modern Dublin Road and Tuttle Road corridor.

Unfortunately, whoever wrote the history apparently decided “Mr. Tuttle” was enough information for people 146 years later trying to figure out why an entire part of Columbus is named after him.

What we do know is that Tuttle Road existed as a rural road long before malls, interstate exits and suburban development arrived.

As northwest Columbus grew, the old farm-road name came along for the ride.

Tuttle Road led to Tuttle Crossing Boulevard.

Then in 1997, The Mall at Tuttle Crossing opened and turned the surname of an obscure early landowner into something generations of Central Ohio teenagers would associate with food courts and Abercrombie.

The mall did not create Tuttle.

It inherited him.

And Tuttle is not alone.

Nearby Hayden Run traces its name back to another early settler, Joab Hayden.

Which means parts of northwest Columbus are basically still giving directions using the surnames of farmers who lived there roughly 200 years ago.

So there you have it.

The Tuttle near Ohio State was a beloved sportswriter who may have blown up Ohio State’s attempt to hire Knute Rockne.

The Tuttle near Dublin appears to have been an early landowner whose first name has managed to disappear while his last name ended up on a road, boulevard and mall.

Two Tuttles.

No apparent connection.

One very confusing city map.

And now you can never hear someone say “Tuttle” without asking which one.

Scarlet Letter Trivia

How many gallons of water does Ohio use each day?

A. 13 billion

B. 10 billion

C. 18 billion

D. 17 billion

ALUM CREEK IS WAY BIGGER THAN YOU THINK

About 25 minutes north of Columbus sits roughly 26.6 billion gallons of water.

That would be Alum Creek.

At its summer recreation level, the reservoir covers about 3,387 acres and holds around 81,700 acre-feet of water. That is enough to fill roughly 40,000 Olympic swimming pools.

And somehow most of us still think of it as just a lake up by Polaris.

Alum Creek State Park wraps another 4,630 acres of land around that water, giving Central Ohio one of its biggest outdoor recreation areas for boating, fishing, camping, hiking and swimming.

The scale gets even more impressive when you look at the infrastructure.

At maximum flood-control capacity, Alum Creek can hold nearly 44 billion gallons of water. The dam itself is about 93 feet tall and 10,200 feet long, and was completed in 1974. The lake was filled by summer 1976.

It also plays a real role in Central Ohio’s water system. Columbus has an allocation that allows withdrawals of up to 35 million gallons per day, with water able to be transferred toward Hoover Reservoir. Delaware County and Westerville also use the system.

Then there is the beach.

Alum Creek has a 3,000-foot beach, the largest inland beach in Ohio’s state park system. That is more than half a mile of sand sitting in Delaware County.

The lake gets deeper than you might expect too, reaching about 60 feet near the dam, with much of it sitting in the 20-to-40-foot range.

And then there is the marina.

THE MARINA IS BASICALLY ITS OWN DESTINATION

Alum Creek Marina sits on the west side of the lake on Hollenback Road and includes about 240 slips, fuel, courtesy docks, boat supplies and rentals.

It also bills itself as having Central Ohio’s largest boat-rental fleet, with pontoons, kayaks, canoes and paddleboards available. Some pontoons can carry groups of up to 14 people.

The marina got a major upgrade in 2022 with a new building that added retail and rental space, food service, public restrooms and showers, plus outdoor gathering areas right on the water.

And this summer, the dock is doubling as a stage.

The remaining Alum Creek Marina Summer Series performances are free and run from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m.:

• Aug. 13: Drew Allan, pop, rock, blues, country, soul and island vibes

• Aug. 14: The Usual Suspects, a 10-piece Columbus band playing rock, soul, Motown and blues

• Sept. 17: Tim Owings, an acoustic one-man-band set closing out the season

So yes, Central Ohio has a nearly 3,400-acre lake, tens of billions of gallons of water, the largest inland state-park beach in Ohio, a full-service marina and free live music on the dock.

Maybe Alum Creek deserves a little more credit than “that lake up by Polaris.”

THE OHIO STATE FAIR IS BIG BUSINESS, AND THE FAIRGROUNDS JUST GOT A MASSIVE OVERHAUL

The Ohio State Fair is one of those Columbus institutions that feels permanent.

Butter cow. Giant slide. Corn dogs. A million people wandering around in 90-degree heat.

But behind all of that is a pretty serious economic engine.

The most commonly cited economic-impact study puts the Ohio State Fair’s contribution to the state economy at about $68.5 million annually. In 2023, the fair drew a record 1,006,228 visitors over 12 days. Even in 2025, attendance was still nearly 970,000 people.

And once people get through the gate, they spend.

At the 2025 fair alone, roughly 350 vendors sold more than $8.3 million in concessions, while midway rides generated more than $3 million. The livestock Sale of Champions brought in another $498,000.

But the fair is only part of what happens there.

The Ohio Expo Center hosts nearly 200 events a year, drawing millions of visitors from Ohio, across the country and even internationally. That includes things like the All American Quarter Horse Congress, Equine Affaire, livestock shows, trade events and consumer expos.

And now the entire place is being rebuilt for that bigger role.

EXPO 2050

Ohio has poured major money into what it calls the Expo 2050 master plan, a multi-phase effort to modernize the State Fairgrounds and turn it into a stronger year-round destination.

The state approved about $196.35 million for the first major phase alone, on top of earlier funding already committed to the project.

The changes are much bigger than fresh paint and new bathrooms.

The project includes a new signature north entrance, permanent ticketing, a central Town Square, new underground infrastructure, expanded Wi-Fi and fiber, accessibility improvements and major renovations to existing buildings.

The biggest additions are two new centerpiece buildings:

The Ohio Agriculture Center, designed to highlight Ohio farming, food and agricultural industries.

And the Ohio Showcase Building, which adds flexible event space, exhibits, galleries and a new food hall. Together, the redevelopment is adding more than 100,000 square feet of flexible year-round event space.

The historic Dairy Products Building and Bricker Building were also renovated, while a new carousel building and gathering spaces were added throughout the grounds. Full completion of this major phase was scheduled for 2026.

And if you went to the fair this year, you could finally see what all that construction was for.

The new Showcase Building includes the Shaping Ohio museum, elevated views across the fairgrounds and an air-conditioned food hall filled with Ohio businesses. The Agriculture Center includes the Taste of Ohio Café, Ohio-made products and space focused on the state’s agricultural industry.

That is really the bigger story.

Ohio is not spending nearly $200 million just to make the fair nicer for two weeks every summer.

It is rebuilding a complex that already attracts millions of people through nearly 200 events every year, while giving the Ohio State Fair itself a much more modern home.

The butter cow is still there.

The building around it is just getting considerably more expensive.

Trivia Answer A. 13 billion