BIG LYON’S FALLS--

Source: Mansfield Semi-Weekly News; 22 November 1898, Vol. 14, No. 96

Submitted by Amy

“There are traditions that are not historically correct. For years past, it has been generally believed in these parts Lyon’s Falls were named for the old Indian chieftain Capt. Tom Lyons.

It may seem like uncalled for iconoclasm...to rob Lyon’s Falls of Indian traditions. But, history should be accurately given, and its correct narration is more instructive and can be as entertainingly told as though its warp were woven with the woof of fiction.

Lyon’s Falls are situated about 15 miles southeast of Mansfield. There are two falls, and the place, which has been a noted picnic resort for many years, is wild in its primitive forest and grand in its rugged picturesqueness.

During the past summer a party...whose names are conspicuous on the list of Mansfield’s “400”, took a day’s outing at these falls....A grave was pointed out to them as that of “the noted Lyons”, and like many others they inferred the Lyons buried there was the celebrated Indian chieftain of that name.

Upon their return to Mansfield they told entertainingly of the wooded hills and sylvan dells, of the over-hanging rocks and of the 80-foot leap of the waters from the edge of the precipice to the basin at the bottom of the chasm, casting its sprays into the cool grottos which the hand of nature chiseled out of the everlasting rocks.

And, the further fact the party had seen the grave of the great warrior lent additional interest to the story and to the locality.

With such allurements it was not long until another detachment of the “400” also visited these noted falls, and the gentlemen of the party fired volleys over the grave, danced a war-dance and gave Indian funeral whoops and came home satisfied they had held suitable commemorative ceremony over the earthly resting place of the body of an Indian chieftain.

(In fact) Tom Lyons, the Indian...was a noted character in the early history of Richland County and was killed by a young man named Joe Haynes to avenge the murder of a kinsman. He buried the old chief in Leedy’s swamp in the southern part of Jefferson Township (not at the falls).

The Lyons buried at the falls was Paul Lyons, a white man. He was not a hermit, as one tradition states; for he took to himself a wife, who bore him a son, and he did not particularly shun his neighbors, although he did not admit them into his confidence....

In about 1856 (Paul) Lyons, while assisting in hauling logs, met with an accident which resulted in his death and he was buried upon the hill, between the two water-falls....

A headboard, painted and lettered was put up at the grave but visitors shot marks at the board until it was riddled into slivers by bullets.... Later the body was exhumed and the skeleton mounted by a physician. A slight depression in the ground is now the only sign showing where that body had been interred.”

Contemporary Neanderthals continue defacing the falls area as shown in the small photo by grinding their initials into the sandstone formation. One of this ilk no doubt impressed his companions with his remarkable display of constructing a survival structure under the falls’ overhanging rock.