Area History

If you went to the Y in 1937 you’d be heading downtown, because the YMCA was located on the south side of Park Avenue West between Walnut and Mulberry, just east of First Lutheran Church. There were dances for teenagers every Monday night, and the gymnasium had all the latest equipment, even though it was […]

Mansfield does not have a mascot. All the schools of the city have mascots, but the city itself does not have a specific symbolic character who embodies its civic spirit. This was not always the case. During the formative years of the city’s industrial emergence—from 1866 to 1923 when local manufacturing rose to prominence—Mansfield definitely […]

There was a time—in the 1920s—when the corner of Fourth & Main was without question the busiest intersection in town. The Lincoln Highway brought cars through on Fourth Street, and the heaviest traffic of downtown businesses was all within shouting distance of Main Street. The photos in this article, spanning 125 years, are all pointed […]

intro There is a primal natural beauty to Hemlock Falls that is completely transporting. Being at the falls is like being in another world, or at least, leaving this world for a while. The history of Hemlock Falls is not too difficult to document: it’s on the books clear back to the first pages of Richland […]

When the fire bell was first mounted into the high tower above Mansfield Fire Department Station #1 the town was small enough and the world was quiet enough that when the bell rang out specific codes for various areas of the city anyone could hear it and know what was going on where. Betty Angle […]

For thousands of years, since the last glacier left Richland County, there has been water cascading over a series of graceful falls amid mossy sandstone cliffs; along the jagged edge of the Mohican River valley, where an ancient stream tumbles through the broken earth. For roughly the last 200 years, the place has been called […]