Finding Utopia: Another Journey into Lost Ohio by Randy McNutt (review)

Finding Utopia: Another Journey into Lost Ohio is the latest work centered on “unusual” Ohio history from author Randy McNutt. A former writer for Ohio Magazine and newspaper columnist for the Cincinnati Enquirer, McNutt’s book is very readable and at times compelling, but has an unfortunate tendency to delve too deeply into the supernatural. McNutt writes with an easy, almost folksy style that will appeal to a very broad audience, as this book was intended. Much like he did in his previous works on Ohio’s disappearing small towns, Ghosts and Lost Ohio, McNutt focuses on local folklore with a smattering of historical sources and newspaper accounts to drive his narrative. While enjoyable to read, all three of McNutt’s “lost Ohio” works are tinged with a certain amount of nostalgia for what must have surely been “simpler times,” an argument that many historians might find problematic. Finding Utopia has its share of ghosts, hauntings, graveyards, and local tall tales, and McNutt occasionally falls victim to nostalgic lamentation, telling his readers that “You can almost sense that life is slowing down” when you enter Chillicothe, for example. Yet overall, McNutt does a credible job in taking his readers down roads less traveled, demonstrating the loss of both a mythical and physical “Utopia.”

McNutt starts his work with a trip to Utopia, a small Ohio River town founded in 1847 by Josiah Warren, a utopian who argued that communal societies could survive only if the residents individually owned and worked the land. His society, however, priced the land so high that few followers came, forcing Warren to sell Utopia to a group of spiritualists led by John Wattles. This experiment was also doomed to failure due to the force of the river, which flooded its banks in December 1847 and killed seventeen residents. All that remains of these grandiose efforts is a sunken basement that served as the spiritualist church. It is at this point that both the strengths and weaknesses of Finding Utopia become evident. The story of the doomed spiritualist community is undeniably gripping, and McNutt’s visit to Utopia and his conversations with the locals is well told. Yet McNutt can’t seem to avoid adding a dose of sensationalism, as the chapter concludes with a discussion on mysterious white orbs (ghosts??) that appeared in photographs taken during his visit to the basement church. Interestingly, none of these “orb” photographs is reproduced in the book. Some readers of Finding Utopia will purchase this book exactly for these types of stories, but more skeptical readers may find themselves rolling their eyes. Why do we have to assume that individuals who met with tragic ends always return as ghosts?

Not every story in Finding Utopia ends with a supernatural twist. In truth, McNutt has an uncanny knack of explaining a sense of “place,” even when that place is now gone. Topics vary widely from the prehistoric (his chapters on the Fort Ancient peoples and the destruction of Hopewell burial mounds by the army during World War I are particularly strong) to the modern. McNutt can also display a dry sense of humor: when he recalls his visit to a public library and was told to look in the Civil War section for information on Arthur St. Clair, we chuckle quietly along with the author. Although well researched with a broad bibliography, this is not an academic history as much as it is a popular travelogue. No source material is cited and much of McNutt’s narrative is dependent on local stories that are more myth than fact. In the end, however, most readers of Finding Utopia will enjoy the visits to these “lost” locations and the denizens that continue to call them home.