Area History

Every four years when the U.S. Presidential election heats up, all that political energy awakens old memories of elections past in Richland County. There was a time when wildly enthusiastic partisans here used to demonstrate the passion they felt for their candidates by engaging in a very old American patriotic tradition: raising a Liberty Pole. […]

Editor’s Note: This is an ongoing series which runs each Thursday morning titled the Richland Chronicles Volume 2, by author Paul Lintern. It is set in the summer of 1831 and tells the story of Richland County through the eyes of young people. This is the second in a three-book trilogy. Volume 1 was Amelia Changes […]

MANSFIELD — There were always saloons at the corner of Fifth & Main — until there weren’t. Today it is an urban green space reclaimed from beer taps and shot glasses. When the famous saloon-smashing activist Carry Nation stormed up North Main Street in 1902, she saw this corner as a nothing but a toll […]

There are more and more sightings of bears in Richland County all the time, which is just about right really, because this place was theirs long before we ever showed up. If footprints could mark the land in such a way as to transcend time it would be easy to see that there were bears […]

Editor’s Note: This is an ongoing series which runs each Thursday morning titled the Richland Chronicles Volume 2, by author Paul Lintern. It is set in the summer of 1831 and tells the story of Richland County through the eyes of young people. This is the second in a three-book trilogy. Volume 1 was Amelia Changes […]

MANSFIELD — As the north side of Richland Mall is morphing into Avita Health System’s new hospital complex, it is a good time to take a look at how the building appeared more than 40 years ago through the lens of a noted American photographer. Not too different, really. When Avita took over the former […]

Nothing says summer like kids with bikes. In 1887 the kids were full grown and the bikes were as tall as the riders. Fortunately a photographer was on hand in Mansfield to take their picture. Depending on which proverb you believe, a picture is worth 1,000, or perhaps even 10,000 words. We shall endeavor to […]

Editor’s Note: This is an ongoing series which runs each Thursday morning titled the Richland Chronicles Volume 2, by author Paul Lintern. It is set in the summer of 1831 and tells the story of Richland County through the eyes of young people. This is the second in a three-book trilogy. Volume 1 was Amelia Changes […]

On the edge of Richland County coming in from western Ohio there is a small ripple of hills in the landscape where the flat terrain of the great plains makes its first tentative rise above the horizon, and the land begins its slow ascent in small rolling hills. It will be hundreds of miles yet […]