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 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 so ...

Ohio Ohio ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Erie to the north, Pennsylvania to the east, West Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Indiana to the ...

. 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, in 1921. This was necessary because of the Miami Valley Flood Control Project and the Miami Conservancy District that was begun after the

Great Dayton Flood The Great Dayton Flood of 1913, part of the Great 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 Ohio Gener ...

(

Dayton, Ohio Dayton () is a city in Montgomery County, Ohio, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of cities in Ohio, sixth-most populous city in Ohio, with a population of 137,644 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. The Dayton metro ...

) of March 1913. Many of the original houses of old Osborn still stand in Fairborn, Ohio, 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 Fairborn Theatre is a historic movie theater in the city of Fairborn, Ohio, Fairborn, Ohio, United States. Built soon after World War II in an Air Force community, it has been named a historic site because of its aviation-themed architecture. ...

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

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