Barb Loewitt
Mill Creek Park Memoirs
What’s in a Name? It was a long time ago. Photos were brown and cream with mold spots on them. There in the photos were ladies with bonnets and boys with suspenders. All were rowing boats and canoes across Lake Macachee. Mac-A-Chee came to be named from three families, MacDonald, Anderson and Cheetz, a nickname for one of the neighborhood women. Lake Mac-A-Chee- Drive was a gravel and dirt, one-lane road with potholes and two pullovers. The doctors in Youngstown came out to the country and put up some summer cottages on the lane facing the lake. It was their retreat, a respite from the busy city. Then times changed and houses were built on the lane, finally a baker’s dozen. And great rains came and washed through the run. An earthen dam held back the water of a new lake, Lake Baytos. But the lake never really held and a marsh was left behind with only pools for minnows and stands of cattails, home to Spring Peepers. In the middle of the 1970’s there were floods throughout Mahoning County. The National Guard put sand bags along the Mill Creek to contain the flood waters. This was the end of Baytos Lake, and all that was left were muddy banks after the earthen dam collapsed. Today, there is just a mere trickle that runs through the Anderson-Macachee Run which connects to the Lake Newport Wetlands. Lake Mac-A-Chee Drive was changed to Macachee Drive to make writing and spelling easier for residents and also to head off the occasional driver, wearing suspenders, who comes down the lane looking for the lake that he used to swim in when he was a boy. Now, the only ones using the stream are the raccoon family, the wild turkeys, and the doe and her fawn stopping for a sip.