The Cranberry Prairie, southwest of this site, is part of Ohio's natural history. It was named for the cranberries that grew in a swamp here before the area was drained. The prairie was created by centuries of peat accumulation in a late Ice Age lake that formed at the base of St. John's Moraine. Paleo-Indian or Early Archaic peoples probably killed the elk whose skeleton was dug up here in 1981, and the elk was dated to approximately 7400 B.C. By the 1860s, immigrant German farmers had begun transforming the swamp into fertile farmland. "Wild Bill" Simison, a legendary inhabitant, lived in the swamp, and settlers respected him for his knowledge of the area. By the turn of the nineteenth century, Granville Township School #7, St. Francis Catholic Church, and Bertke's Store stood at the edge of the Cranberry Prairie.