Area History

‘Up Ferguson Way’ is a high ridge of forest and fields, riding the rim between Pleasant Valley and the valley of the Clear Fork River; on land that is a part of Malabar Farm State Park. It was given that name by author Louis Bromfield when he established Malabar Farm in 1939; though he said […]

It has been more than 200 years since the Square was established as the core of Mansfield’s downtown, and during that time it has gone through many stages of appearance. The period when it was most photographed—1852 to 1958—was the era when it stood as a shady grove of trees, like an island in the […]

When is a square not a square? When it’s a diamond: It all just depends on how you look at it. In America we have the traditional Town Square, but in Ireland, Scotland, England that same four-sided downtown gathering place would be called the Village Diamond. That’s why Mansfield has a Diamond Street. This is […]

The art and design of lighting the streets in downtown Mansfield is an ever-evolving process.  At this point in time, there are corners where you can look in three different directions and see three different kinds of streetlights from the past 60 years.  For a look at lights from before 60 years ago, all it […]

The pages of Mansfield history hold many fascinating designs of coincidence: the phenomenon where fate spirals our timeline back on itself in order to create irony, mystery, and an almost mystical sense of balance. Many of these stories involve the Square, and one example involves a particular corner of the Square that happened to serve […]

In the 1930s, when a lot of America was struggling to find work, there was a busy crew of young men hired by the Federal government to recondition the natural area in Ashland County known today as Mohican State Park. Among the many tasks they undertook was picking up a steel trestle bridge that crossed […]

The Glorious Fourth takes place on only one day of the year, but Mansfield history actually exists in a dimension that stands outside of time: where it is free from all limitations of the sequential ticking of life’s clock. On the timeline—as on the internet—it is always exactly today, always exactly now; and the whole […]