Area History

We pretty much take it for granted today, and don’t particularly notice the underpass on Park Avenue East: it is simply a landmark on the way through. But in 1925, when the roadway was dug out underneath the railroad tracks, that bit of road was a miracle: it meant that traffic was no longer backed […]

Standing in the crumbling foundations of the long-gone St. Joseph mission church, one can almost imagine hymns being sung fervently, if a little out of tune, by the immigrant farmers gathered in the tiny church atop a steep hill just over the county line into Holmes County. Standing at the head of the congregation was […]

When the house lights begin to dim, and the footlights are rising like the first of dawn: that is the moment when the lines blur between worlds of daylight reality and limitless fantasy. The lights go down like your eyes closing for the night, and then, when the spotlight suddenly splits open the dark, whoever […]

A postcard stamped in 1944 and sent from Mohican State Park, shows the trestle bridge that crossed the Mohican River in Hog Hollow. That same view today, photographed from river’s edge just west of the Park Road, has a familiar skyline of timbered hills but a different bridge. In 1968, the old iron span was […]

Mansfield, Ohio is just a small city in the anonymous rolling hills of the American Midwest, and it is a long way from Broadway. It’s even farther from Hollywood. Yet there is a common denominator between these three points in the cultural map of America: it’s a boy whose role as a giant killer led […]

MOUNT VERNON — Whatever the confusions and disconnects that modern technology may cause us, there’s no denying that it has made some wonderful things possible for historians. Today, one can find long-lost information with a few taps of the computer keyboard. Of course, you have to know what keys to tap. In researching the fascinating […]

Historically speaking, the now-familiar view from the top of the fire tower in Mohican Memorial State Forest is a relatively recent sight for humans of Richland and Ashland Counties. The Clear Fork Gorge has been there for many thousands of years, but the view of it that we enjoy today from 80 feet in the […]