1940s Flashback

Posted on August 11, 2013 by Denny

Cincinnati Museum Center held its first “1940’s Day” in 2011. It became “1940’s Weekend” in 2012 and is again a two day (Aug 10 & 11) event this year. The Museum Center occupies Union Terminal which saw its heaviest use in the 1940s. It opened in1933 with a capacity of 17,000 passengers per day; A number that not only seemed adequate but, with rail travel already on the decline, major overkill. It was World War II, of course, that changed that. The terminal became a hub for the movement of troops and as many as 34,000 passengers, twice as many as it was designed for, passed through it daily.

Though it doesn’t completely ignore them, “1940’s Weekend” doesn’t focus on the horrors and hardships of the war years but on the bright spots they contained and the brighter years that followed. Music figured into many of the bright spots both then and now. The Jump ‘n’ Jive Show Band and several guest vocalists kept energetic attendees jumping and the Sweet and Lows roamed the building with their wonderful harmonies. The picture shows an “on location” performance of The Trolley Song (a.k.a. Clang Clang Clang went the Trolley). The Sweet and Lows perform both days but the Jump ‘n’ Jive Show Band gives way to the P & G Big Band on Sunday.

The rotunda was filled with vendors of, mostly, railroad memorabilia and there were demonstrations of some of the grooming procedures of the day. The theater showed newsreels that were post war or at least post V-E Day. The picture I’ve posted is of General Eisenhower praising the rank and file members of every military branch for their war contributions. I also attended two live presentations in the theater.

The first was a recreation of an episode of the Seckatary Hawkins radio program. Seckatary Hawkins was the creation of Covington, Kentucky, native Robert Franc Schulkers. The mystery solving character first appeared in 1918 in the Cincinnati Enquirer then in novels and a radio program. Initially the show was done in Cincinnati by Schulkers and friends and family but it soon moved to Chicago where professional actors filled the roles. Following the presentation of a little history, a volunteer cast was assembled and a fine performance delivered. The once huge Seckatary Hawkins Fair and Square club has been revived and you can join for free. I did.

The second presentation stepped away from music and laughter. For the first time, each day of the weekend will feature a Holocaust survivor presenting their own story. Today’s speaker was Werner Coppel who had been sent to Auschwitz-Buna as a teenager. He subsequently escaped during a death march. I have seen movies and read books and have had other personal Holocaust stories told to me directly but none more insightful or delivered as articulately as what I heard today. Calling it a highlight may seem strange but that’s what it was for me. There is a short video of a previous Werner Coppel talk here. Henry Fenichel will share his story on Sunday. He can be seen in a video here.

Book Review
The Lincoln Highway: Photos Through Time
Brian Butko

Posted on July 31, 2013 by Denny

Lincoln Highway Pictures Through Time - cover I was hesitant to post a review of this book because some of those “Photos Through Time” are mine but I decided that it would be a bad thing only if I rave about how marvelous the book is. No harm in simply describing it, right? So here are the facts.

The Lincoln Highway: Photos Through Time was created for the Lincoln Highway Association as part of its centennial celebration. One of the most visible parts of that celebration was the pair of car tours traveling the Lincoln Highway from its two ends to a meeting in the middle. A copy of the book was part of the tour package and it is also available for sale exclusively through the Lincoln Highway Trading Post.

It’s a sampler. Its purpose is to give an overview of a century of Lincoln Highway. It is not a guide book or a scholarly history book. It does not contain pictures of every scenic spot along the road or every notable building or every key association member. It does, however, contain a whole bunch of each of those.

Lincoln Highway Pictures Through Time - sample It is organized neither geographically nor chronologically. The first section following the foreword is titled “History”. Here, among pictures of collectibles and artifacts, Butko gives a very brief history of the road’s birth and short life. It is enough to give someone who knows little or nothing about the Lincoln Highway a starting point and someone who knows everything a quick refresher on key dates and events. It is a stripped down but adequate introduction to the pictures that follow.

Lincoln Highway Pictures Through Time - sample Those pictures are organized by their subjects. Butko identifies ten things that comprise the Lincoln Highway and gives each one a chapter. They are “People”, “Gas”, “Food”, “Lodging”, “Vehicles”, “Attractions”, “Signs”, “Markers”, “Bridges”, and “Roads”. The chapters are themselves samplers. Historic images from postcards and other sources are combined with modern photographs. Images of things along the road, which is every chapter other than “People”, are from locations spread over the road’s entire length.

The sources of the photos are pretty diverse, too. Butko lists more than fifty contributors. He supplied a large number of images himself and, at a presentation at the Centennial Celebration in Kearney, Nebraska, he singled out Russell Rein, Jeff Blair, and me as next in number of contributions. Many of the historic images came from Russell’s huge collection. Jeff and I are both amateurs who happened to be the the right place fairly often but our pictures get to appear alongside stuff from real pros like Michael Williamson, Drake Hokanson, Rick Pisio, Shellee Graham, and Jim Ross and Brian has made sure they all look as good as possible.

I described the “History” chapter of having value for two very different audiences. Maybe that’s true of the whole book. Most of its first recipients, members of those centennial tours, are probably somewhat familiar with almost everything in the book. For them and others like them, the book might be a memory booster or a chance to see an image of something they’ve only heard about. On the other hand, there is a large group of people who ask “What’s that?” when hearing of the Lincoln Highway. Flipping through the pages provides glimpses of what’s there today and some of what was there in times long past. Turn the pages slowly and read all the captions for an even better answer to the question.

The Lincoln Highway, Photos Through Time, Brian Butko, Lincoln Highway Association, 2013, paperback, 10 x 8 inches, 136 pages, ISBN 978-0989208000

Available at Lincoln Highway Trading Post.

The Annie Gathering

Posted on July 28, 2013 by Denny

There are big doings in Greenville, Ohio, this weekend. Some are associated with the Annie Oakley Festival and some are associated with the Gathering at Garst. The Festival includes a parade through downtown but essentially takes place at the Darke County Fairgrounds on the south side of town. The Gathering takes place on the grounds of the Garst Museum towards the north side of town. Since the museum houses something called the National Annie Oakley Center, you might think the Festival and the Gathering are just two aspects of a single event but that’s hardly the case.

The parade is completely the responsibility of the Annie Oakley Festival as is a shooting competition, using air rifles, whose winner earns the title Miss Annie Oakley. In the lingering drizzle, I failed to get a picture of this year’s winner, Courtney Osborne, but I did get a picture of the 1970 winner, Patty Nisonger Padula, who was this year’s Grand Marshall. I was watching the parade with my uncle in front of his store and he told me that Patty had been an employee when she won in 1970. He had been her driver in the parade in another black convertible, his 1962 Corvette. The parade included a couple of high school bands, several classic cars, many Shriner units, and much more. A most appropriate entry was the group of female horseback riders most of whom were riding on side saddles.

The rain had moved on and the sun was shining by the time I made it to the Gathering at Garst. The museum was surrounded by tents selling various craft items and small antiques and there were a number of food tents as well. A field across the street was filled with “living history”. It included some additional vendors and some big guns which were fired once in a while.

I also stopped by the fairgrounds to check out the Annie Oakley Festival. There were vendors selling food and other items including some crafts. There was a small car show and bus tours, included in festival admission, depart from the fairgrounds to visit related sites such as Annie’s grave.

In the beginning (1963), the home of Annie Oakley Days, as the festival is commonly called, was the museum and its grounds. That lasted for thirty-some years until the festival moved to the fairgrounds for a number of reasons including more space and access to electricity. It had the last weekend in July all to itself until the first Gathering was held in 2011. A Bob Robinson article, written shortly after that inaugural Gathering, indicates that, while both were calling themselves successful, neither was completely comfortable with the other.

The Gathering is free but parking is $4. There is a fair amount of parking available on nearby streets so some (like me) avoid the charge by walking a bit. Parking is free at the Festival but admission is $3. Advance $2 passes were available from some area merchants. Both events offer various forms of entertainment including concerts.

I’m guessing that both can call themselves successful again this year. However, as someone who attended the first Gathering and several Festivals, I have little doubt that the Gathering is getting bigger and better attended while the Festival is shrinking along with its crowd. Only time will tell whether both can survive. I hope so. I like that living history stuff but I like even more the parade and the Miss Annie Oakley contest. Is “The Annie Oakley Gathering at the Garst and Darke County Fairgrounds” too long to fit on a tee-shirt?

Even with its $8 admission fee, the museum gets a lot of traffic during the Gathering and Festival. I’m a member but had not been inside for awhile. In fact, it seems that I’d not been in the museum proper since sometime prior to attending an Annie Leibovitz exhibit in October. That exhibit included a photograph Annie L had taken of a pair of boots at the Garst Museum. I resolved to look at the boots, made for Annie O around 1915, a little closer on my next visit. I expected it to be sooner than this but doing it in the midst of the Gathering/Festival is more than alright. Taking a photo of Annie L’s photo was not permitted but I will admit it’s a wee bit better than mine. Hers was helped by getting the boots out from behind the glass but I think there might be a little more to it than that.

A Tale of Two “Cities”

Posted on July 7, 2013 by Denny

I live a little over eight miles from Cozaddale, Ohio, and have driven through it numerous times. The most recent was June 9 when I took the first picture at right. I live a little over eight hundred miles from Cozad, Nebraska, and have driven through it exactly twice. The most recent was Friday when I took the second picture at right. As you might suspect from the names, there is more to connect these two towns than my visits. Both were named for, or more accurately by, the same man.

John Jackson Cozad was born in 1830 near Allensville, Ohio, but he didn’t stick around long. He ran away at the age of twelve and before long found his way onto riverboats plying the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. He also found his way into a successful career as a faro dealer. I’ve found no indication that his success came from anything other than a carefully developed ability to read the faces of opponents, but I did find a claim that this ability led to him being barred from riverboats and other gambling operations.

Although he never completely gave up cards, Cozad moved into real estate speculation/development around 1870. He laid out an eight street village on land he owned along the Marietta and Cincinnati Railroad and formed a building association. Things began well enough and a few buildings were completed in this place he called Cozaddale before some “trouble” (of which I’ve found no details) brought about the end of the association and Cozad’s development of his first town.

Horace Greeley may or may not have said “go west, young man” a few years earlier but John J Cozad probably didn’t need any such encouragement anyway. Nebraska had become a state in 1867 and, apparently while still postmaster of Cozaddale, Cozad went to look it over in 1872. The way railroad section boss John Cusack tells the story, he was checking track on a handcar headed west when he spotted Cozad, in top hat and tails, walking east. The Ohioan had been on a westbound train when he spotted a 100th meridian sign and left the train at the next stop. Inspired by the sign, Cozad developed an almost instant vision for a town that he described to Cusack. After hitching a ride on the handcar, Cozad returned to Ohio, bought 40,000 acres of Nebraska, then came back with about thirty others to build a namesake town at the 100th meridian.

Cozad, the town, grew and Cozad, the man, became a “hay tycoon”. As a big time farmer in cattle country, Cozad, the man, had his share of conflicts with ranchers. One such conflict was with an Alfred Pearson. Some reports say Pearson pulled a knife and some reports say Cozad thought Pearson reached for a knife. All reports say that Cozad pulled a gun and fired. Pearson died of his wounds a couple of months later and Cozad the man left Cozad the town almost immediately. Teresa Cozad, John’s wife, stayed around long enough to dispose of the family’s holdings then, with their two sons, she too vamoosed.

To most people, the Cozad clan seemed to have simply disappeared then, in the 1950s, a descendant revealed some of the missing bits of the story. Using the name Richard Henry Lee, John Cozad opened a place called Lee’s Pier on the boardwalk of Atlantic City, New Jersey. Son Johnny posed as a brother-in-law using the name Frank Southern and son Robert posed as a nephew or foster son named Robert Henry. Perhaps not surprisingly, Richard Lee managed to stir up things in Atlantic City, too. In a conflict with the city over selling his property, Lee/Cozad built a barricade across the boardwalk that earned his place the name “Fort Lee”. He eventually lost but it took the state legislature to beat him.

John J Cozad by Robert Henri John A. Cozad, a.k.a. Frank Southern, eventually went back to his real first name and became, as Dr. John Southern, a well respected physician in Philadelphia. Robert Henry Cozad retained a slightly modified version of his Atlantic City alias and went on to great fame as an artist. His childhood home in the second town his dad founded is now the Robert Henri Museum. At left is a portrait that Robert Henri painted of his father, John J. Cozad, in 1903.

This is obviously one of those pre-written pieces but, unlike most of the My Gear and My Wheels sorts of things, this one is tied ever so slightly to real-time. I suppose it was sometime after I drove through Cozad, Nebraska, in 2009 that I discovered the connection between there and Cozaddale, Ohio. When I realized that I would be passing through Cozad again this year, I thought it might be cute to get a picture of the Cozaddale limits sign and do something with it in my journal entry when I again reached Cozad. I did a couple of searches hoping to find something interesting to say and the wild stories just kept tumbling out of the internet. It was soon apparent that it would take much more than a journal panel to do the John Cozad story anything near justice. Knowing I would be using several canned entries during the Lincoln Highway drive, I decided that this, with a single new picture, would be one of them. It was primarily constructed with information from here, here (via WayBackMachine), and here. Those three sources don’t agree on everything and there are other, slightly different, versions out there, too. That certainly doesn’t surprise me. I’ve a feeling that John J himself couldn’t get his life story completely right even if he was trying to be entirely honest and I also have a feeling that being entirely honest wouldn’t come easy to him.

Ye Olde Flex-Master
A My Gear Extra

Posted on June 16, 2013 by Denny

Flex-Master camera I am not someone who delights in using old film cameras. I can appreciate that others do and I can appreciate the phenomenal engineering and manufacturing accomplishments embodied in high-end film cameras. But I like the convenience and economy of digital photography far too much to spend my own time and money on anything else — with one exception.

That exception is the camera at right. It’s certainly old and it uses film but it is about as far from high-end as you can get. The exact same camera was sold under a variety of names with prices around three or four dollars. An uncle won this one by investing a quarter in a punch-board in 1940. I never knew him. He went off to war and never came home. My Mom, his sister, ended up with the camera. I remember it being our family camera in the early 1950s.

There’s not much to it. It’s called a pseudo-TLR. TLR stands for twin lens reflex which means one lens for the photo and an identical twin for the viewfinder. I’m not sure that what feeds the viewfinder on this camera can properly be called a lens at all. It does somehow produce a dim right-side-up but reversed left-to-right image on an upward facing screen. There’s no focus or aperture control and not exactly any shutter speed control. There is a shutter release and a little lever that selects “INST.” or “TIME”. The length of an “instant” isn’t specified but I’m guessing it’s somewhere between 1/50 and 1/100 second. As you’d expect, “TIME” holds the shutter open as long as the the release is held down. The back is held in place by a thumbscrew. Remove it to thread the paper backed film onto the relocated empty spool from the previous roll then close it up tight. Turn the knob on the side to move a frame number into first one then the other red window.

I believe both of these pictures were taken with the Flex-Master. The first one is known to be from the winter of 1950. The other is probably from the next spring. It’s one I frequently use as an “on the road” Facebook profile picture.

I said I appreciate folks who work with film cameras and I know some, too. One in particular, Jim Grey, lives close enough that I’ve passed a few ~~junk~~ classic cameras his way. Jim not only gets a lot of pleasure from his cameras, he gets some very nice pictures from them, too. I recently asked Jim about the Flex-Master and he told me where I could buy film for the camera and also where to get it developed. There aren’t many choices. It’s tough enough finding processing for film from a still-in-production Canon or Nikon let alone something out of a seventy-three year old punch-board prize. Nor is it cheap. With postage, two rolls of 127 black & white film came within pennies of twenty-eight dollars. Processing, with postage but without prints (you get jpgs), is $16.50 a roll.

One of the first places I tried the camera was in front of the 1886 Hayesville Opera House after Cece Otto’s American Songline concert. I managed to totally botch two of the three pictures I took of Cece by doing double exposures (Now, there’s something you don’t hear of much in the digital world, Chauncey.) and the one that did kind of turn out has a building that looks like a reflection in a fun-house mirror. I’m guessing that the film wasn’t held flat but I don’t know why. The picture of the Roebling Bridge with Cincinnati in the background doesn’t seen so distorted so maybe the film got pulled tighter later in the roll… or something. Both pictures have a pair of vertical scratches that I think line up with rails molded into the camera back which I’m guessing are there to press the film flat. Matching scratches can be seen in some of the pictures taken with the camera in the ’50s. Just remember that “far from high-end” statement near the beginning of this article.

If the first roll had been a complete disaster, I’d have given the other one to a friendly Hoosier camera collector and saved my self $16.50 in processing. Since the disaster was less than complete, I’m going to take the “seventy-three year old punch-board prize” along on my upcoming ride in a fifty year old car on a one hundred year old highway and see what develops.

Doyle Bankson, that camera winning uncle, is buried at Colleville-sur-Mer in France. His parents (my grandparents) placed his name between theirs on this tombstone in Ohio. Part of me felt really silly using the camera he won as a teenager to take a picture of a stone more than four-thousand miles from his grave. Part of me didn’t.

This article is being posted on Father’s Day. That’s somewhat, but not entirely, a coincidence. Dad took quite a few pictures with the Flex-Master. He was in some, too. Here’s a picture of Dad, my sister, and me that was taken with a twelve year old punch-board prize.

Dayton Remembers

Posted on May 5, 2013 by Denny

At right is a very old light bulb with some very old water inside. The bulb was in a Dayton, Ohio, high school during the 1913 flood and a microscopic hole allowed water to get inside. The worst natural disaster in Ohio’s history struck on March 25, 1913. On March 23, 2013, a permanent display, devoted to the flood, opened at Carillon Historical Park. I saw the exhibit for the first time yesterday.

An existing building was greatly enlarged to house the display though it’s almost impossible to tell the new from the old. The original building was nearly filled by the Rubicon fireless steam engine. The NCR (National Cash Register) owned engine had been a big help in the flood recovery so adding the display to its home seems appropriate.

The 1913 flood wasn’t the first for Dayton. The city stands at the convergence of three rivers and a creek so flowing water is ever present. Some actual photographs of the 1866 flood are on display with a larger image of from the 1898 flood as background. There were also major floods in 1828 and 1847. The TV screen with modern style reporting of 1913 weather may look a little corny but it is an effective way of describing the wind, rain, and temperatures that gave rise to the flood.

Many personal stories and artifacts help make up the exhibit. Katherine Kennedy Brown’s diary, with a large “The Flood” headlining the record of her experiences, is one. Another is the dress Grace Hall had made for her wedding. Trapped by the flood, Grace was rescued by her fiance but the dress was left behind. Read the placard here. The three-dimensional map beyond the dress was made by NCR in 1914 to show the extent of the flood. About fourteen square miles of the city were under water at the flood’s peak.

Attics often figure prominently in floods and they certainly did in this one. “Remember the promises you made in the attic” became something of a rallying cry after the flood. A recreated attic is part of the exhibit but I didn’t expect much when I stepped into it. The moving light patterns on the solid floor looked about as corny as the derby-wearing weatherman. Maybe so but it is also just as effective. As I stood in the small space listening to the sounds of water coming from the dark hole that led the lower parts of the house and the creaking of the structure as water pressed against it, that concrete floor became a lot less solid and I had just a tiny sense of what it was like fearing that one of those creaks would change to a crack.

The exhibit loops back to the Rubicon where the story of the birth of the Miami Conservancy District is presented. Many also consider this the birth of modern flood control. Under reminders of those “promises made in the attic”, Daytonians organized and financed a project that has succeeded in keeping Dayton dry to this day. It’s impossible to say just what this hotbed of invention would have become without the flood but it’s fairly easy to guess what it would have become without the MCD.

Although the carousel and 4-D theater were here when I visited last year, I didn’t actually see them. The carousel is filled with Dayton icons such as the Wright brothers’ dog and a Huffy bicycle. The animatrons in the theater tell of Dayton history with the help of some seat shaking, wind blowing, and a few dashes of water. The Wright brothers are there along with John Patterson, Charles Kettering, and Colonel Deeds. One of the reasons I’ll be coming back next year is shown in the third picture. Work has just begun on the Carillon Brewing Company which should open by the end of 2013. The brewery will produce and sell beer using historic tools and methods.

The flood was also the subject of an earlier blog entry, a guest post from HistoricNaturalDisasters.com.

Roadhouse Down

Posted on April 17, 2013 by Denny

Yes, this post is a bit unusual. It’s not a regularly scheduled Sunday post and, although it is a Wednesday, it’s not one of the reviews that are often posted on that day. Nor is it the “real-time” announcement of the start of a road trip. This post concerns the Tuesday destruction of the 191 year old Twenty Mile House that was also the subject of a post in early 2012.

The first of the two pictures at left was actually taken Monday evening. In recent days, there had been reports from Friends of 20 Mile House that demolition was imminent. It was reported on Monday that fence was being erected around the building and I drove by at the end of the day fearing that the tear down had already started. It hadn’t. When I read of the arrival of men and equipment on Tuesday morning, I once again headed toward the old landmark expecting to see mayhem in progress. I arrived with the building still intact but it wouldn’t be for long. The picture at the top of the article was taken at 9:05.

The demolition proceeded rapidly and, despite the unhappy circumstances, it was impossible not to admire the skill of the operator as he worked his machine through the building. The additions of various ages went down first and, even though I certainly knew better, I kept hoping that something would happen to spare the 1822 heart of the building.

Then, in what looked to be as much accidental as planned, a corner fell away when an attached piece of a newer section was removed. One end of the old stagecoach stop was open and my foolish hopes were gone when the workers broke for lunch.

Not long after the men returned, there was an almost ceremonial toppling of one of the old chimneys and destruction of the original section began in earnest.

A second excavator had been brought in and it played the role of buttress as the oldest parts were brought down. At last there was just one section of wall standing with enough height to warrant attention. It was quickly leveled with a simple shove from the second machine.

Roughly six hours had passed since the first blow; A one hour lunch and five hours of destruction. A little less than two hours were spent leveling the section that had stood for a little less than two centuries. A Big Mike’s Gas N Go is to replace the rubble and I’ve no doubt that it will be constructed with the same level of efficiency as that with which the rubble was created. No one I know has any intention of ever spending a cent there but those people weren’t enough to save the Twenty Mile House and they probably won’t be enough to even get Big Mike’s attention in any significant way. There are more than enough people who don’t know or don’t appreciate history to make Mike some money. Big Mike’s will likely be profitable. It will never be loved.

UPDATE: 20-Jan-2018 — A short time ago, I realized that this post was getting many more visits than is to be expected for a five year old post. I eventually determined that the source was a link from a discussion of a picture of the Twenty Mile House in a Facebook group (Old Photos of Cincinnati). This is the second of three post about the historic building. An update to the first one contains a pointer to here, and the third one contains pointers to both of the preceding posts. This one, however, links to neither of the others. I am correcting that now and intend to also update the first post to link to the third. The first post (Twenty Mile’s Last Stand) was posted while the building was still standing and there was some hope of saving it. The third (Twenty Mile Stand Two Years On) was written two years after the demolition and takes a look at how the new structures relate to what was destroyed.

And Now For Something Completely Different:
A Guest Post on the 1913 Flood

Posted on March 25, 2013 by Denny

There hasn’t been a lot of requests/offers to do a guest post on this blog but there have been a few. Until the most recent, all were from sites with nothing but contrived and flimsy similarities. They resembled shotgun “link swap” requests more than anything and that, of course, made them easy to ignore. The latest request was different. It came from some fellow Ohioans who call themselves “weekend history buffs”. Their recently launched website looks promising and their initial round of blog posts involves something that’s been on my mind of late. Exactly one hundred years ago today, water started spilling into the streets of Dayton, Ohio, from stressed levees. The flood that followed is the topic of this post from the folks at HistoricNaturalDisasters.com.

ADDENDUM 27-Mar-2022: Obviously my ability to assess new websites leaves much to be desired. HistoricNaturalDisasters may have been promising but it was not delivering. It is now gone and probably has been for quite some time. This nine-year-old guest post may be the only remaining online evidence that it ever existed.

HistoricNaturalDisasters.com Guest Post

The week of March 21st through March 26th marks the 100 year anniversary of one of the greatest natural disasters to ever hit the United States. A series of storms caused flooding and even tornadoes that ravaged the Midwest and parts of New England during this week in 1913 and left hundreds dead and thousands homeless, and caused billions of dollars in damage. One of the cities hit the hardest by the storm’s fury was Dayton, Ohio.

Located along the Great Miami River bend, Dayton had been prone to major flooding events every decade or so since its establishment in 1796. What happened during the storm of 1913, however, was a flood the magnitude of which was unlike anything Dayton had ever seen. Starting on March 21, storms dumped between 8 and 11 inches of rain on the already oversaturated Great Miami River watershed causing all the rivers in the region to swell far beyond their normal banks. At approximately 6 AM on March 25th, the levees holding back the Great Miami River broke and water began to rush into the Dayton streets at speeds approaching 25 miles per hour.

The waters filled the city so rapidly that most of the residents were trapped in their homes and many were quickly forced to take refuge on their roofs as the waters filled the first and second floors of their homes. Many people were faced with essentially camping on their roofs for days on end as they waited for rescue, which proved nearly impossible for relief workers in boats due to the incredibly strong currents of the flood water. The currents were so forceful in fact that many homes and business were literally ripped from their foundations and carried away by the waters, disappearing from the Dayton streets forever.

Downtown Dayton was among the hardest hit areas, with flood waters reaching a high of 20 feet in some spots. Unfortunately, the destruction was just beginning, as fire took hold where the waters receded, fed by natural gas escaping from broken stoves and gas lines and pushed along by strong winds. An entire block of businesses and factories in downtown Dayton was burned down to the water line, with the fire department unable to get men and equipment close enough to help due to the depth of flood waters.

By the end of the flood, March 26th, the damage was widespread. 14 square miles of the Dayton were underwater, and more than 360 people were dead. Some 20,000 homes were completely destroyed, an estimated 65,000 people were left homeless, and all told, the city had suffered close to $100 million ($2 billion in today’s dollars) worth of damage. The cleanup effort took more than a year to complete and Dayton’s economy didn’t make it back to pre-flood levels until more than a decade after the disaster.

1913: Fifth and Ludlow Streets in downtown Dayton during the worst of the flooding

1913: The ruins of the Lowe Brothers Paint Store on the Southeast corner of East Third and Jefferson Street in Dayton

2013: The corner of East Third and Jefferson Streets as it appears today

1913: Fifth and Ludlow Streets in downtown Dayton during the worst of the flooding

2013: Fifth and Ludlow Streets in downtown Dayton as it appears today

Thanks so much to Denny Gibson for letting us share a piece of this historical project on DennyGibson.com. We’re humbled by the interest in this project, and we really hope you enjoyed this snippet of history!

We’d also like to thank some of the great archives and archivists who have done so much work to preserve the amazing history of the 1913 flood, including the Dayton Metro Library and historian Trudy Bell. The amount of history compiled at these two websites is amazing. Lastly, thanks to Jason from InsuranceTown.com, who lent us some of the resources we used to help prepare content for the web and publish our blog and inspired our Mapping History Contest.

Don’t forget to check out HistoricNaturalDisasters.com for more images and for information on our Mapping History Contest – help us figure out the locations pictured in historic photos from 1913 and you could win $100!

Sappy Ohio

Posted on March 10, 2013 by Denny

I really goofed last week. I was in Greenville on Saturday but didn’t realize it was syrup making time at the Shawnee Prairie Preserve with demonstrations and a waffle! breakfast. It would have been perfect but, in my ignorance, I dawdled, ate breakfast in Dayton, and only reached town and learned of the event long after breakfast was finished and the whole shebang was pretty much over. I cast about for a way to make up for this missed opportunity and even briefly considered returning to Hinckley with the buzzards for one of the area’s big maple sugaring weekends as I did in 2011. But, in the end, I decided to stay closer to home and yesterday checked out the 47th Maple Syrup Festival at Hueston Woods.

I started out by standing in line for the very popular pancake breakfast at the park lodge. I realize that the breakfast isn’t all that photogenic but it sure tasted good. Pure maple syrup does that.

Then I headed over to the Pioneer Village area to stand in line for a “hay ride”. Trucks pulling trailers with seats made of straw bales carried people to the start of a short trail leading to the “sugar shack”. A guide would then lead the way down the trail while providing information about the area and the syrup making process. In chatting with some of the volunteers, I learned that a shortage of guides had resulted in a minor bottleneck. Even though our departure was delayed as long as practical and the ride to the trail was as slow as possible, we still reached the trail several minutes ahead of our guide.

The wait was worth it. I feel extra bad about not learning our guide’s name because he sure was an extra good guide. He spoke, in a most entertaining way, about both the natural and human history of the area and he talked of the social as well as technical aspects of sugaring. He explained that, since the sap contains only a percent or two of sugar when it comes from the tree, it doesn’t taste very much like syrup. At the guide’s invitation, several young tour members personally verified this by licking fingers that had caught a few drops.

There was another line at the sugar shack but it wasn’t a long one. The original Hueston family shack burned in the 1980s but the current one looks much the same and is on the same foundation. Maple syrup must be about two-thirds sugar which means an awful lot of water has to be removed. This is accomplished by the wood fired evaporator The fog makes it hard to see but the warmth is certainly welcome. After hearing an explanation of the evaporation process, there was one more short line for the shuttle back to the car at Pioneer Village. The well run free festival is a great fun and educational, too.

Not far from Hueston Woods, the home of William Holmes McGuffey, the man behind the incredibly successful McGuffey Readers, is now a museum. It’s owned and operated by Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. McGuffey was part of the university faculty when he had the house built in 1833 then took on creating the first reader, published in 1836, as a way to augment his professor’s salary. The house is filled with wonderful period furnishings including several of McGuffey’s own pieces. Among these are the eight-sided rotating table and the tall desk behind it. I was accompanied as much as guided by a fellow named Steve who thoroughly answered every question I had. Like the festival, the McGuffey Museum is free and fun and educational.

Dead Sea Scrolls in Cincinnati

Posted on December 9, 2012 by Denny

Several Dead Sea Scrolls form the centerpiece of and lend their name to a major ongoing exhibit at the Cincinnati Museum Center. The full name of the exhibit, which I attended on Monday and which runs through mid-April, is Dead Sea Scrolls: Life and Faith in Ancient Times. The “scrolls” are in that circular table whose edge is near the center of the photograph at right. They’re not really scrolls though. Not many of the things comprising what we call the Dead Sea Scrolls are. The first manuscripts pulled from caves near the Dead Sea in 1947 were actual scrolls — seven of them — but not so most of the items found since then. Those first scrolls have been described as “relatively intact”. Subsequent finds have largely been fragments of varying sizes. Pieces of parchment and papyrus containing writing were found in a total of eleven caves in the area and by 1956, when somebody decided they had found all there was to find, some 15,000 to 30,000 fragments of what are estimated to be more than 900 manuscripts had been retrieved. About 40% of the manuscripts are copies of books in the Hebrew Bible (a.k.a. Old Testament), 30% are religious documents not part of the canonized Bible, and another 30% are secular.

Ten of those manuscripts are represented in that big circular table. To help preserve them, they will be swapped out for a different ten half way through the exhibit. The actual bits of ancient writing are inside sealed climate controlled compartments. Enlargements, notes, and English translations are on the table’s surface. Attributed to the period between roughly 250 BCE and 100 CE, most of the Dead Sea Scrolls are written in Hebrew with a respectable number in Aramaic and a few in Greek or Nabataean. All those in the exhibit are either Hebrew or Aramaic. I can’t read one word. Studying the scrolls doesn’t do much for me in practical terms but gazing on documents produced two millennia ago is downright awesome.

The scrolls are the big draw but by the time most people buy their tickets, they are aware that there is more — a lot more — on display. I regret getting no pictures in the first room of the exhibit where a museum guide uses three ancient jars and walls filled with changing pictures of the region to illustrate an overview of the scroll’s discovery and a little history. From there, visitors enter a long hall with dates on the floor and some seriously old artifacts displayed along one wall. Some sense of the world that preceded the writing and hiding of the scrolls can be obtained here.

Next up are some newer and larger artifacts. An accurate count of artifacts displayed is elusive but something above 600 is probably close. This is reportedly the largest exhibit ever mounted in Cincinnati. The 2011 Cleopatra exhibit had about 150 items and the Pompeii exhibit from earlier this year was just over 250. The rightmost picture is of pottery shards with writing on them. Waste not, want not.

As visitors get nearer the scroll display, artifacts seem to become a bit more involved with religion. Holders of incense and offerings are well represented and there are hints of a bit more idolatry than I might have suspected. The tall painted cylinder in the second photo is called a cult stand. It’s thought that a bowl with incense or other offerings would have been placed atop it.

Not surprisingly, no photos are permitted in the area where the scrolls are displayed. What was at least a little surprising to me was that the scrolls are not displayed in isolation. They are surrounded by more artifacts, descriptive texts, a short movie, and a stone wall. The movie and texts present some of the facts and theories about who wrote the scrolls, the circumstances of their hiding, and their relationship to the three Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The wall is basically a replica of a section of the Western/Wailing Wall in Jerusalem but it frames what is believed to be a stone from the actual wall. The three ton cube was not ripped from the wall for the exhibit. Roman soldiers of about 70 CE get the blame for that. Touching the stone is permitted and this can be a very emotional experience for some. Visitors may also insert written prayers into crevices in the replica just as is done at the real Wailing Wall. These prayers are collected periodically and sent to Israel. A nearby video screen displays a live feed from the real wall.

The last part of the exhibit is, I believe, a Cincinnati exclusive. The Hebrew Union College here has been involved with the scrolls from shortly after their discovery. An HUC professor played a key role in the purchase of four of the first seven scrolls in response to a 1954 classified ad in the Wall Street Journal. In the 1970s, HUC secretly stored many photographic negatives of the scrolls for safe keeping. When publication of translations dragged on and on, another HUC professor published his own interpretation of many scrolls in 1991. That exposed him to being sued over copyright violations and he lost. Any 250 BCE copyright on the actual scrolls had most likely expired but the suit involved some intermediate translation work. Despite a courtroom defeat, a lot of the scrolls were now out of the bag and things have been a lot more open since then.

And they’re about to become even more open. The picture at left was taken at a free lecture I attended at the Museum Center in November. The speaker is Pnina Shor of the Israel Antiquities Authority. The screen behind her is demonstrating a digitization project that the IAA has undertaken in partnership with Google. This is not the first time that some Dead Sea Scrolls have been digitized. The scrolls are not all owned by one entity though reporting who and where is way beyond anything I want to deal with. Lots of people have some and some are already available on line. But the IAA has a bunch and their digitization project is a big one. Estimated completion is 2016 with the first phase, consisting of a few manuscripts, going live in mid-December. The images are being recorded at 1.2 gigapixels. You’re going to need a bigger screen.

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