Amish Buggies Lose Their Shortcut Into Ohio Town Over Horse Manure

Amish buggies in Barnesville, Ohio can no longer use the village’s historic B&O Railroad tunnel as a shortcut into town. Signs now prohibit horses there, following complaints about manure, as well as safety concerns.

This is a community of over 400 Amish people in Belmont County in eastern Ohio, a couple counties southeast of the Holmes County settlement.

The tunnel is now part of Barnesville’s paved walking trail. WTRF reports that Amish traveling by horse and buggy had often used it to get into town. Mayor Jake Hershberger says that is no longer allowed.

Hershberger gave two reasons for the change. The first is pedestrian safety, and the second is the manure, which was generating complaints. Here’s the mayor quoted, via the WTRF report:

So it’s not safe for a buggy to go through while pedestrians are walking or a mom’s pushing a stroller.

And it’s not pleasant to have horse poop there so we put signs up prohibiting horses from going through the tunnel and on the walkway, the trails and stuff.

It was brought up in council about the horse droppings like in town, on the road.

Hershberger also acknowledged that the Amish are a contributing part of the community, and that they shop at local stores, use local banks, and produce goods that area grocery stores buy and sell. I guess this is stating the obvious, and is said as a way of appreciating the Amish as community members publicly after doing something that essentially restricts them specifically.

The final line of the article left me a bit confused, however: “He says gas and oil traffic tears up the roads but benefits the economy.” That seems to imply “gas and oil traffic” (is that simply an odd way of describing motor vehicles?) also does harm of sorts to roads, but also benefits the economy?

That is puzzling because it seems to imply that Amish buggy traffic does not benefit the economy. But the mayor himself acknowledged that Amish residents patronize local businesses, of course.

It’s unclear how significantly this will actually affect the Amish. Does losing the shortcut simply mean adding an additional five minutes to a journey on a relatively quiet and easy alternate route? Or does it mean traveling much further and possibly along a more dangerous route?

I would guess it’s closer to the former, as nothing is mentioned here as far as potential buggy safety concerns resulting from the change.

Manure Disputes In Other Communities

Over the years, horse manure has caused complaints and flare-ups between Amish and non-Amish neighbors in other places. In fact I’d say it’s one of the more regular friction points between the two groups.

In Indiana, a 2015 petition in the LaGrange and Elkhart County settlement asked that horses wear bags to catch manure, and drew about 1,600 signatures. In 2019, a Pennsylvania township proposed horse diapers, rubber horseshoes, and numbering on all four sides of buggies. In Kentucky in 2017, 13 Amish defendants even faced a court trial over manure ordinance violations.

And most recently, in Bedford Township, Pennsylvania, supervisors scrapped a proposed ordinance earlier this year that would have banned steel-wheeled buggies and required manure cleanup.

As WTRF describes it, the signs cover the tunnel, the walkway, and the trails, so this doesn’t seem to affect any regular roads, and in that sense would make it different from these other cases, which involved public roads and official ordinances. The report does not say when the signs went up, or whether any penalty applies.