Once upon a time, Forest Hills Country Club had a pool outside of town. That pool, their clubhouse and surrounding land were donated to Miami University by Armco in 1963 to become the Middletown branch campus. Construction obliterated all landmarks. The pool was buried. Could it be found again?

"I've tried to locate it," said Russell J. Nicols, president of Forest Hills now and in 1963. He is the country club's official historian and his membership dates back to 1947. Nicols has clear memories of how it was. Because of topography, the pool was built in a valley, downhill from the clubhouse.

"I've tried to recall how far back to follow the lane to get to the pool," he said. "They might have bulldozed the hill down, built buildings or tennis courts on top of it."

"It was always busy," Nicols said. "But a helluva climb back up. You didn't just go up for a Coke." Although Nicols could not cite the pool's dimensions he said you had to get out of it for others to dive.

Mrs. W. T. Thorn has memories that go back even further-to the early 1930' s when she was a Girl Scout. She also swam in the pool as a teenager and remembers high school classmates going there to skinny-dip at night, but denies that she was involved.

Nicols, who first swam there as an adult, considered the night swimmers "vandals," although he admitted they did no real damage. " Isolated like it was," he said. "No fence. Kids at parties would say 'let's go to Forest Hills'. They could make a lot of noise because no one was around. Wildwood subdivision was built in the 1950's there was no Country Side development By the time police could get back there, the people were gone."

Thorn joined Forest Hills and her children grew up using the pool. But the university took over before they could try to swim at night.

Armco, led by its president, George M. Verity, made all this possible in 1920. He had the company buy 500 undeveloped acres east of town as a potential park. Around 1930, part of that land was transformed for public use, maintained by the company. The pool was built for a Girl Scout summer camp which could be leased by Armco families for a week at a time, according to Thom. "Bunny Hollow", the central attraction of Armco Park, was further down the hill. Forest Hills Country Club incorporated in 1936 and got the pool and clubhouse facilities for their exclusive use, along with a downtown golf course built by Verity and Brown's Run Riding Club.

The park and country club were vacated in 1962, and Miami-Middletown opened on the site in the fall of 1966. Dr. Elizabeth Krukowski remembers seeing the ruined pool that first semester from her office window. She pointed through that same window but was not sure exactly where the pool had been. Her directions down a ravine into the woods located some concrete and railing along a creek, but nothing plainly a pool. Something more definitive than an eyewitness was needed.

Unfortunately, campus maintenance did not have a map showing an underground pool. The archives at Miami-Middletown's library had only one reference. In the last paragraph of a February, 1966 Middletown Journal story on campus construction it was noted that vandals had thrown bathhouse fixtures into the pool. And that it would be filled. The article did not say where the pool was, but it gave a hint: Johnston Hall was built on the same hill as the clubhouse but graded 20 feet lower.

That means the directions of Krukowski and the memories of Nicols and Thorn corroborated, but aerial photos taken during construction show the raveen pretty much as it is now -- no sign of a pool and no ground disturbance from filling it in. A piece was missing.

And it was supplied by Dr. Carl Eugene Bennett, executive director of Miami-Middletown for its first 20 years and a man famous for his hikes around campus grounds.

"It's not visible," he said. But he could locate it, about 25 yards downstream from Krukowski's recollection.

"It's behind the science building," he said. "If you go down the hill, there's a terraced lawn. We used to set up a volleyball net down there for the students, but they didn't use it much. The pool is under that terrace."

Intact.

It is now overgrown with ten feet of sticker bushes and trees, much lower than the surrounding growth. From the back of Thesken Hall you would not notice how it levels out down the hill.

But from below you will find slate steps, some slabs of concrete, and a lovely pool-sized terrace. Looking up you can easily imagine the campus gone, the clubhouse just up the hill and lots of people splashing among the trees.

Although Bennett considered keeping the pool for water sports or converting it to a reflecting pool, its condition was too poor. "Springs were coming up through cracks in the bottom," he said. "The university couldn't afford to spend the energy or money on it."

By the time a construction crew put it under, Bennett's mind was on something else and he can't recall when it happened.