Loveland, Ohio, officially turned 150 a week ago Saturday. A celebration featuring a vintage base ball game with former Cincinnati Reds players was planned, but threatening weather caused that game to be canceled. Other parts of the celebration did happen Saturday evening, but I didn’t get to the party until Sunday, 150 years and 1 day after Loveland was incorporated as a village.
The area’s first settler was Col. Thomas Paxton, and he established a community bearing his name around 1795. In 1847, Col. William Ramsey laid out a town here, and in 1848, changed the name to Loveland after the first postmaster, James Loveland. A major post office connection still exists today. The Loveland postmark is quite popular around Valentine’s Day, and a remailing program started in 1936 is still going strong. The Village of Loveland was officially incorporated on May 16, 1876. It was incorporated as a city on July 25, 1961, so I’m guessing we’ll have another big party in 35 years.
Several activities, including live music and Loveland Frog appearances, were scheduled for Sunday, but about all I took in was the car show. Like any car show deserving of the name, there was a DJ playing hits from yesteryear. The Internet tells me that DJ still stands for “disc jockey” although I’m pretty sure that no discs of any sort were involved here.
There were no radical customs or heavily hot-rodded cars, but even without them, the cars on display covered a rather wide range. These three, among the very first I encountered, do a nice job of illustrating that range.
If called upon to describe the typical entry at the show, I’d say it was a nicely restored/maintained very drivable auto from the ’40s, ’50s, or ’60s. There were quite a few on hand that matched that description.
As is fairly common at car shows, attendees were asked to vote for a “People’s Choice” award. I wish I knew who won, but I don’t. I do know that this 1961 Studebaker Hawk got my vote. Read about it here.
After completing a pass through all the cars, I walked a couple of blocks away to my favorite bottle shop, Cappy’s. In recognition of Loveland’s 150th, Cappy’s collaborated with Jackie O’s in Athens, OH, to produce a Legend of Loveland hazy IPA. Note that there are two really good breweries in Loveland, but neither really distributes outside of their own taproom. The beer arrived on Thursday and by mid-afternoon Sunday, all the cans were gone. I try to drink an IPA every ten years or so and think I might have been falling behind. Fortunately, even though no cans were available, draft Legend of Loveland was still to be had, so I’m OK.