The Development of Lane Road

Lane Road — not to be confused with Lane Avenue to its south — today extends from Riverside Drive through Reed Road providing an important east-west connector for our city, along with access to Lane Road Library and Thompson Park.

In 1895, when all of today’s Upper Arlington was the southern part of Perry Township, the terrain was drastically different. The purple arrow points to today’s Lane Road location. Notice the roads we know today as Henderson, Reed and Fishinger are in place, albeit with different names.

The purple box above encloses P.J. McCoy’s 51.5 acre farm. Given that Turkey Run is far from a sailable body of water, it is obvious that Mr. McCoy had no easy access to / from his property. The following letter, preserved in the Society’s Archives, explains his actions:

The drawing that accompanied said petition is shown below, traced from the original. Note how it matches up with the 1895 map above.

Porter James McCoy’s petition to build a road was accepted, and the newly-constructed lane was named “McCoy Road” for him, as seen on this 1910 map:

This photo from the Society’s Archives shows the country-like landscape of this area, and possibly of P. J. McCoy Road, as it is dated 1900. The road does in fact look like a dirt path:

The 1933 map, which in its entirety shows a northward growing Upper Arlington community, has two different McCoy roads in what is still Perry Township - P.J. McCoy and R. McCoy roads. (“R” is for P. J.’s grandfather, Robert, who is buried in the Bickett Richards Cemetery along Riverside Drive.)

Note the “W. H. Lane” property (on previous maps, this was noted as “W. R. Lane”) to the southeast of the “P. J. McCoy Road” text on the map. Sometime between 1940 and 1950, while the land was still part of Perry Township, P. J. McCoy Road was renamed Lane Road as it remains today. Between 1957-1972, portions of Lane Road were annexed into the City of Upper Arlington.