Coshocton ( kə SHOK tən) is a city in Coshocton County, Ohio, United States, and its county seat. The population was 11,050 at the 2020 census. It is located approximately 63 miles (101 km) east northeast of Columbus. The Walhonding River and the Tuscarawas River meet in Coshocton to form the Muskingum River.
Coshocton contains Roscoe Village, a restored canal era community located next to the former Ohio and Erie Canal. The village is a heritage tourism attraction focused on the area’s canal history. A heritage tourist attraction, it showcases the area’s unique canal history. The city was developed on the site of a former Lenape village established in the late 1770s by bands who had migrated from the East under European oppression. Coshocton is the principal city of the Coshocton micropolitan area.
At a Glance
- County: Coshocton County
- County seat of Coshocton County
- State: Ohio
History of Coshocton
The Lenape sympathetic to the new United States stayed near Coshocton, then called Gosch ach gunk. White Eyes, then leader of the Lenape people, signed the Treaty of Fort Pitt of 1778, by which the Lenape hoped to secure their safety during the War, and he promised scouts and support to the rebel colonists.
In retaliation for frontier raids by hostile Lenape and British, Colonel Daniel Brodhead of the Continental Army ignored the treaty. After indiscriminately raiding and destroying the peaceful Moravian Christian Lenape settlement of Indaochaic also known as Lichtenau, he attacked and destroyed the Lenape at Coshocton in April 1781.
Coshocton was originally called Tuscarawas by American colonists, after the river, and under the latter name was laid out in 1802. The young town was renamed Coshocton when it was designated county seat by the legislature in 1811.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Coshocton, Ohio, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.