Horse Boarding Ohio

Residents of Hide-A-Way Hills celebrate the community's casual lifestyle

Photos Hide-A-Way Hills celebrates 50 years of casual lifestyle Enclave's history 1961: Hide-A-Way Hills Inc., operated by F.H. "Don" Do-nelson, begins selling lots in the 1,500-acre resort-style subdivision southeast of Lancaster. Developers build a lodge, horse barn and golf course. 1965: Construction begins on a dam to create the 110-acre Lake of Four Seasons, the centerpiece of the development. 1967: Equity Capital Corp. buys Hide-A-Way Hills Inc. for $1.4 million and announces that the community will expand by almost 100 acres. 1970: Donelson regains control of the development. 1971: A marina, beach and playground are built on the north end of Lake of Four Seasons. 1972: Residents form the nonprofit Hide-A-Way Hills Club, which assumes control of the community after developers file bankruptcy in 1974. A board of trustees operates the club. 1991: Members approve a $200-a-year assessment to chip and seal community roads. 1993: To obtain a liquor permit, the club installs a microbrewery in the Lodge to brew Rushcreek Lager and Pale Ale. The restaurant is opened to nonmembers. 2004: Hide-A-Way Hills buys a 54-acre estate, putting total acreage at 1,650. offer a shopping center, city water and sewer, a ski and toboggan run, a teen club, a children's zoo, a motel or snake-free lots. That didn't stop its developers, however, from promoting those and other features when they launched the "leisure-living" community a half-century ago.

 "Some of the stories they told were fantastic," recalled Lee Thomas, a retired logistics consultant from Canal Winchester who bought his first Hide-A-Way Hills lot in 1965 with his wife, Mary. "There were free golf clubs at the golf course, snowmobiles in basements. It got to the point where it became a joke."

Thomas and other Hide-A-Way Hills veterans laugh about phantom amenities offered by overzealous salesmen during the community's early days.

But they are just as quick to mention all of the features that the 1,650-acre private development does have: a nine-hole golf course, an airport, a security gate staffed round-the-clock, a lake with a marina, a swimming pool, tennis and basketball courts, a beach, a horse barn, two post offices, a lodge, a shooting range and an outdoor church.

As appealing as such amenities might be, the most common lure isn't man-made.

"The biggest reason I hear from people moving in would probably be the nature setting," said Bucky Childers, a retired Anchor Hocking executive who moved into Hide-A-Way Hills in 1992. "I can sit here in the morning and see the bass feeding 20 feet into the lake and the ducks floating by, and foxes that run and deer that come up from the water. It's just a really special setting.