Osborn was a town located near the Haddix Road- Ohio 235 intersection at the northern edge of

Wright-Patterson Air Force Base Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (WPAFB) is a United States Air Force base and census-designated place just east of Dayton, Ohio, in Greene County, Ohio, Greene and Montgomery County, Ohio, Montgomery counties. It includes both Wright and Patte ...

in what is now the flood-prone basin of the

Huffman Dam The Miami Conservancy District is a river management agency operating in Southwest Ohio to control flooding of the Great Miami River and its tributaries. It was organized in 1915 following the catastrophic Great Dayton Flood of the Great Miami R ...

in the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sover ...

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

. Osborn was named after the superintendent of the railroad named E.F. Osborn. The previously unnamed town allowed the railroad to be built through it after the nearby town of Fairfield refused the plan of the railway to go through there. Nearly the entire town of Osborn, along with the railroad, were relocated two miles away during construction of the Huffman dam to a site east of and adjacent to

Fairfield, Ohio Fairfield is a suburban city located in both Butler and Hamilton counties in the U.S. state of Ohio. Fairfield is located approximately 25 miles north of Cincinnati and is situated on the east bank of the Great Miami River. The population ...

in 1921. This was necessary because of the Miami Valley Flood Control Project and the

Miami Conservancy District The Miami Conservancy District is a river management agency operating in Southwest Ohio to control flooding of the Great Miami River and its tributaries. It was organized in 1915 following the catastrophic Great Dayton Flood of the Great Miami R ...

that was begun after the

Great Dayton Flood The Great Dayton Flood of 1913 resulted from flooding by the Great Miami River reaching Dayton, Ohio, and the surrounding area, causing the greatest natural disaster in Ohio history. In response, the General Assembly passed the Vonderheide Act to ...

(

Dayton, Ohio Dayton () is the sixth-largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Montgomery County. A small part of the city extends into Greene County. The 2020 U.S. census estimate put the city population at 137,644, while Greater Day ...

) of March, 1913. Many of the original houses of old Osborn still stand in

Fairborn, Ohio Fairborn is a city in Greene County, Ohio, United States. The population was 34,620 at the 2020 census. Fairborn is a suburb of Dayton, and part of the Dayton Metropolitan Statistical Area. It is the only city in the world named Fairborn, a port ...

in the "Osborn Historic District". On January 1, 1950, Osborn and the neighboring town of Fairfield were merged as Fairborn. The first business to depict the name of the new city was the large vertical sign of the Fairborn Theatre. The old Osborn cemetery lies within the boundary of Wright-Patterson, near the north end of the main flight line, which used to be part of the town. During the building of the longer runway to accommodate the large

B-36 The Convair B-36 "Peacemaker" is a strategic bomber that was built by Convair and operated by the United States Air Force (USAF) from 1949 to 1959. The B-36 is the largest mass-produced piston-engined aircraft ever built. It had the longest win ...

Bombers in the 1940s, the old streets of Osborn were still visible on the ground near the airstrip.

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Further reading