Crittenden Farm

Crittenden Farm is a 665-acre working farm in western Ruggles Township, Ashland County, Ohio, bounded by U.S. Routes 224 and 250. Its gently rolling land includes pasture, cultivated fields, a twelve-acre lake behind an earthen dam, and a western woodland of beech, tulip and hickory that appears never to have been logged. Two large wooden farmhouses stand on the property. The Charles Crittenden House, dated 1878, is a Second Empire residence with a mansard tower, carved porches and an ornate cornice. The Henry Crittenden House is an Italianate home of nearly identical plan. Brothers Charles and Henry Crittenden built them after dividing their father Medad's farm in the 1870s. The land was first bought from the government land office by Nezer Sutherland, and a small stone-enclosed family cemetery holds early owners. The farm is notable for its size, its surviving virgin forest, its architecture and its unbroken form over roughly a century and a half.