The Vinous Legacy Behind Some Curious Mount Tusculum Street Names

Way atop Mount Tusculum, there are some streets that remind us this marvelous hill was once a vineyard. The streets named Chardonnay Ridge, Riesling Knoll, and Catawba Valley are fairly redolent of the vine. Curiously, those obvious streets may have less connection to that old vineyard than three nearby streets, namely Delaware Ridge, Creveling and Elsinboro, and therein lies a tale.The prominence we know today as Mount Tusculum was once known, according to the 1943 WPA-published “Guide to Cincinnati,” as Bald Hill, supposedly because “the Indians had cleared away the trees in order to spy on the invading white men.” This is absolute bunkum, baloney and claptrap. If the Native Americans wanted to spy on the settlers downhill in Columbia, they would have kept the trees in place so they wouldn’t be seen, right? Additionally, the settlers were just blaming the Shawnee for their own deforestation. With lumber needed for housing and fuel, the white folks timbered all of Cincinnati’s hills…