WHO WE ARE
“Welcome to Perkins Township” is a phrase new residents will hear often as Friends of Perkins Township welcomes new homeowners in Perkins to their new neighborhood with a Welcome to Perkins Township Package.
Friends of Perkins Township, a non-profit 501(c)(3), has been active since 2015 creating activities to promote the pride and unique heritage of Perkins Township. We created both Community Day and Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony in 2015. We participate in, among other events, Lights on the North Coast, and Perkins Schools’ Back to School Bash. We are also the sponsor of free guided tours of the natural and wildlife areas of NASA’s Armstrong Test Facility on Milan Road.
Our meetings are usually on the first Wednesday of each month at 6:00 p.m. at Perkins Township Services Facility, 2610 Columbus Ave, Sandusky. We’re excited to welcome visitors and all new homeowners. Please consider joining us for a meeting—your insights and contributions are highly valued.
GALLERY
MISSION
The Friends of Perkins Township is a volunteer organization that strives to serve and enhance Perkins Township by organizing events and projects promoting local pride and respecting the unique heritage of the Township.
VISION
We work to create positive relationships among our commercial and agricultural businesses and our residents by supporting and developing projects that foster a spirit of civic unity within our many neighborhoods.
HISTORY & INTERESTING FACTS
Until the Erie Canal opened, in 1826, it was difficult for settlers from New England to travel to the Firelands (present-day Erie and Huron Counties) to claim or purchase land in the region. But the Erie Canal, by the use of ships on Lake Erie, allowed convenient access to the Firelands and the area was quickly settled, including Perkins Township.
Typically, people who had lost property to fires set by British troops in the Revolutionary War, in Connecticut, were later granted or sold new property in the Firelands. With the Erie Canal, settlement proceeded rapidly.
In most cases, the new Firelands properties were purchased from land agents in Connecticut, and new settlers traveled west to claim their new properties. Real estate agents would meet the new owners when they stepped off the boats and were taken by horse or buggy to their new, undeveloped wild properties.
But at the start, in many cases new landowners were alarmed by what they had purchased, unseen; expanses of open land that simply could grow even a single tree; tallgrass prairie.
But, soon enough, it was discovered that the treeless plains of the region were, actually, very fertile; able to produce multiples of the corn or wheat grown in the thin, rocky soils of their native Connecticut.
Where, in Perkins Township, were these extremely fertile, treeless, open prairie lands? There was an old Indian Trail that defined the western border of the prairie; what today is Taylor Road. Lands on the east of it were open prairie; to the west, oak forest.
Perkins Township has an area of 25.9 square miles. The southeastern portion was tallgrass prairie, about 9 square miles; about 35% of the township — which, yet today, are some of the most fertile agricultural soils in America. In the spring, as you travel along US 250 (Milan Road), you can see the dark prairie soils. They are dark because of the fertile humus produced originally by the dense, deep roots of the prairie grasses and wildflowers.
Meadow Environments LLC
The Largest Landholding in Perkins Township
The largest Perkins Township landholding is owned by the U.S. Government, owning NASA’s Neil E. Armstrong Test Facility (ATF) — 5,141 acres; 8.03 square miles in Perkins Township. ATF’s total size is 6400 acres, 10 square miles, with 80.3% inside Perkins Township, which is 31% of all of the land area of the township.