Tag Archives: History

Book Review
20 in ’21 and the YT Too
Denny Gibson

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Missed it by that much. I had this really great idea for a book title, and even figured out the story that would fit it. I would drive one way across the country on the Yellowstone Trail and the other way on US 20. I would do this in the year 2020, and the resulting travelogue would be perfectly described by that catchy title: 20 in ’20 and the YT Too. But COVID-19 played havoc with 2020 travel plans and the wonderful title’s “best if used by” date came and went. I made the planned trip a year later and adjusted the title appropriately. It’s admittedly not quite the same but it’s not horrible. Is it? Well?

As for the trip, it certainly wasn’t horrible. It was fantastic. And the resulting travelogue isn’t horrible either. Maybe not fantastic but definitely not horrible. I think calling it pretty good is legit. It’s got pictures.

It has more pictures than any previous Denny Gibson travelogue. It would also have the most pages if you took Granny’s letters out of Tracing a T to Tampa. I’ve been saying it has nearly 200 photos. I believe the actual count is 192 and “nearly 200” sounds much more impressive than “over 190”.

Like all the previous travelogues, the pictures are black and white. I started this project intending to use Amazon’s new improved color options. I even had a proof copy printed in premium color to see how it looked. It looked good. I asked myself if I thought other people would pay $30 or more for the book and answered, “Probably not”. Then I asked myself if I would pay $30 or more for the book and again answered, “Probably not”. So I backed away from the idea of a full-color glossy-paged thing of beauty and again embraced the idea of a gray-scale matte-paged thing of practicality. However, just as with the others, there is a Kindle version with color pictures. Electronic color is free.

The subtitle is a bit misleading. The documented trip doesn’t really start on a coast. It starts in Ohio, goes to the Atlantic, then the Pacific, then back to Ohio. The book sometimes refers to this as C2C2C2C (center to coast to coast to center) but that requires way too much explanation to work as a subtitle. The pictures on the front cover do a better job of describing this sequence than the subtitle does. From top to bottom they show a sign in Boston, Plymouth Rock, Pioneer Square, and a sign in Newport. These represent the termini of the pair of historic highways in the sequence they were reached. First is US 20’s east end then the Yellowstone Trail’s east end. The Yellowstone Trail’s west end is next followed by the west end of US 20. The book covers a whole lot of traveling before that first terminus and after the last one.

In summary, the book has a cool (but not as cool as it could have been) title, tells about crossing the USA twice on historic highways, has lots of B&W (though color was considered) pictures, and has an almost but not quite true subtitle. What’s not to like?

20 in ’21 and the YT Too, Denny Gibson, Trip Mouse Publishing, 2022, paperback, 9 x 6 inches, 189 pages, ISBN 979-8422405411.

Signed copies available soon through eBay. Unsigned copies available through Amazon.

Reader reviews at Amazon and Goodreads are appreciated and helpful and can be submitted regardless of where you purchased the book. All Trip Mouse books are described here.

Our Shared Story at CMC

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Joseph Jonas is thought to be the first Jew to actually settle in Cincinnati. That was in 1817. In 1821, he was one of a handful of men who purchased land for a cemetery so Benjamin Leib’s deathbed request that he be buried as a Jew could be met. The creation of that cemetery, the Chestnut Street Cemetery, is recognized as the event that formally established the Jewish community in Cincinnati. It was renovated last year and its rededication on September 26, 2021, marked the official beginning of the Jewish Cincinnati Bicentennial.

But it wasn’t a visit to the cemetery that led to this post. It was the “Our Shared Story” exhibit at the Cincinnati Museum Center that led to a visit to the cemetery. In 1821 Cincinnati really was a frontier town and the Chestnut Street Cemetery was not just the first Jewish cemetery in the state but the first west of the Alleghenies. In 1824, K.K. Bene Israel was established. Now known as Rockdale Temple, it is the oldest Jewish congregation west of the Alleghenies. Cincinnati’s Jewish community experienced great growth and had significant impact on the religion in the U.S. with things like major support for Reform Judaism and the founding of Hebrew Union College. The exhibit tells of this influence but has even more examples of the impact Cincinnati Jews had on the world at large.

Quite a number of community and business leaders are recognized. This picture is of a wall where several of those business leaders are identified. Some of the businesses are Manischewitz, Frank’s, Fleischmann’s, and Frisch’s. I got a kick out of seeing a “Jewish Cowboy” promotional record put out by Manischewitz. I got an even bigger kick out of listening to it on YouTube.

As befitting a place that started professional baseball, one Jewish business found success in sporting goods. The Cincinnati Red Stockings began play in 1869, the P. Goldsmith Sons Company was founded in 1875, and a Jewish player named Lipman Pike joined the Reds in 1877. Of course, there are now Jewish players in every professional sport and Jewish fans too as this Bengals yarmulke shows.

Chestnut Street Cemetery is less than a mile from the museum. A double-sided plaque contains information about the cemetery and the two centuries of Jewish history. The information panel visible in the opening photo says that Benjamin Leib’s grave is unmarked but believed to be “in the back left corner”. I’m guessing that means it’s in the left rear of this picture.

Celebrating

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Tuesday was my birthday, and there was a blog post that day more or less announcing it and revealing that I had removed from my body the only thing about it that was getting thinner. This post describes the far-ranging travel and wild celebration that filled the day. The party actually started in early morning when I met my buddy John for breakfast in Wilmington. I left there thinking I might follow US-22 all the way to Steubenville but a prediction of rain prompted me to switch to a shorter path using US-62 at Washington Courthouse, and congestion, as I neared Columbus, nudged me onto a faster expressway route. In fact, I gave myself up to the GPS at that point and Garmin kept me on I-71 until I reached US-30 near Mansfield.

I continued blindly following the voice in the box until a glimpse of a semi-familiar cheese shop brought me to my senses. Shisler’s Cheese House is a place I normally associate with the Lincoln Highway so, after picking up some Swiss and cheddar to munch on later, I sought out a few bits of the old road. I made a side trip in Canton but returned to the old Lincoln and the brick Baywood Street in Robertsville.

The target of my Canton excursion was Fat Head’s newest brewpub at the north edge of town. Fat Head’s started in Pittsburgh, PA, in 1992 and opened this location, their fourth, in 2018. That’s Black Knight Schwarzbier in the glass.

The place that the GPS had been leading me to was the Spread Eagle Tavern in Hanoverton. The picture at the top of this post is of the tavern’s sign. Hanoverton is a Lincoln Highway town so I’ve stopped at the Spread Eagle several times. I have eaten there once but had never stayed there. I corrected that by spending Tuesday night in the Van Buren Room. It’s the inn’s smallest in both space and price but was more than adequate for me.

Between check-in and dinner, I was able to see familiar rooms empty for the first time and make first-time visits to some other spaces. This second group included the lower level rathskeller which is currently open only on Fridays and Saturdays. The tavern first opened in 1837 but had fallen into disrepair until a major restoration took place in the late 1980s. Additions and improvements (such as converting the dirt-floored basement to the brick-lined rathskeller) happened, but all materials came from either the tavern itself or other badly neglected buildings from the same period.

I ate dinner at a table just out of frame on the left side of this picture and breakfast just out of frame on the right. I failed to get a picture of breakfast which is truly sad because it was one of the best breakfasts I’ve ever had and it was included with the room. I was just too busy chatting with Kim, my server, about the building and other topics both related and not. I had been better prepared at dinner and did get a snapshot of my wonderful walleye by candlelight. 

Leo da Vinci and the Forty Machines

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I’ve read that, once upon a time, ordinary people rarely needed to count past forty and that forty became another way of saying “a whole bunch”. That implies that Noah and family might not have watched it rain for precisely forty days and nights and that Ali Baba may not have encountered exactly forty bad guys. We have outgrown that, of course, and today use numbers like gazillion when we are tired of counting even though that probably occurs long before we reach forty. That is not, however, the case with this post. The Leonardo da Vinci: Machines in Motion exhibit currently at the National Museum of the Air Force in Dayton contains exactly forty of Leo’s “machines”.

I took in the exhibit on Friday. It is set against the wall farthest from the entrance which means there is some walking involved. Not only does this provide an opportunity for a little exercise, but there are also plenty of opportunities for getting distracted on the way by the many other, mostly permanent, displays in this wonderful museum. I skipped my favorite gallery, Early Years, and focused on the da Vinci exhibit and still spent at least as much time getting to and from it as I did experiencing it. It’s simply impossible to ignore all those unusual planes and their engaging stories.

A fair number of the displayed machines have to do with flight. That is certainly appropriate for the Air Force Museum although the exhibit’s makeup was not tuned for the location. In fact, this appearance seems to be a recent addition that is not yet listed on the schedule at the Machines in Motion website.

The high ceiling at the museum allows some of da Vinci’s concepts to be suspended overhead as if in flight although they sometimes have to share space with flying things of more recent vintage. The overhead displays include the “parachute” in the opening photograph. The version here is not quite full size. A full-sized version and a description of a real-world use of the design were part of the Da Vinci the Genius exhibit I saw in Cincinnati in 2016.

Leonardo’s flying machines may not have been practical but many of his other ideas certainly were. I don’t believe it is a proven fact that he invented ball bearings but his design of a revolving stage using them might have been their first practical application. His designs for converting one form of motion to another (e.g., rotary to linear) were definitely practical. Check out the kid getting a real hands on education in the background of the second picture. The third picture shows a machine combining several devices to raise heavy pillars.

Seeing this machine for grinding concave mirrors was a real learning experience for me. The sign next to it talks about burning mirrors and mentions that one of their uses was welding. Believing that welding was at best an eighteenth-century concept, I had to look into that and discovered that the welding of soft metals like gold and copper goes back much further and was rather common in da Vinci’s day.

The exhibit runs through May 8 and, like the museum itself, is free.

Voice of America Museum

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I attended Airwaves Kite Fest in 2006 and 2010. 2006 was the second of eight; 2010 was the sixth. It was a cool way to greet springtime and I wish it was still around. It was held at the Voice of America Bethany Station site where a huge array of antennas once broadcast news and more to Europe, Africa, and South America. I believe that parts of the building were open in 2006 and I took some photos inside but the entire month of April 2006 has gone missing from my photo archives. The building held the beginnings of a museum in 2006 and in 2010 it was being renovated to improve the museum operation. Since then, it has gone from being open sporadically to being open every Saturday and Sunday. I’ve driven by it countless times since 2010 but Saturday was the first time I actually did what I told myself I should do on most of those drive-bys. I made it inside where those 2006 beginnings have turned into the impressive VOA museum.

I arrived just as a volunteer was wrapping up his introduction to a sizable group which turned out to be all one family. I accompanied them past a beautifully restored Crosley Hot Shot to watch a short orientation movie.

Then it was a stop at the “Ham Shack” operated by the West Chester Amateur Radio Association. Several members were present (and behind me in the photos) and we were given an overview of the operation. We also got to listen in on a conversation with a fellow in Finland while we were there.

The claimed purpose of the Volksempfänger (people’s receiver) was to make radio reception affordable to the general public but its real purpose was to make the general public accessible to Nazi propaganda. Of course, it could also be used to listen to the BBC and VOA although that was quite illegal. Knowing that Hitler sometimes referred to the VOA broadcasts as “the Cincinnati liars” was and is a source of pride for the locals.

Hitler was completely wrong. For one thing, from its beginning, VOA realized that broadcasting reliable and truthful news would have more impact than broadcasting false propaganda. Secondly, although transmission was from near Cincinnati, the content was not. It came from New York and Washington on telephone lines which were routed to one of six 200-kilowatt transmitters. There were no liars involved and definitely none in Cincinnati. Before it was shut down in 1994, Bethany Relay Station saw several upgrades in transmitters and antennas. People living nearby often reported receiving the station on the plumbing in their bathrooms and the fillings in their teeth.

There were multiple reasons for locating the station here including it being a safe distance from the coasts. But a possibly bigger reason was the existence of Powell Crosley and Crosley Broadcasting. After starting elsewhere at 50 watts, Crosley’s WLW (World’s Largest Wireless) was broadcasting AM from just down the road at 50,000 watts. Between May of 1934 and February of 1939, it had transmitted at an incredible 500,000 watts. Here’s a closeup and description of that pictured metal ball. Across the road from the AM station, a Crosley shortwave station was retransmitting its programming. This became WLWO (Overseas), increased power to 75,000 watts, and, as told here, begat VOA.

Crosley begat a lot of other stuff too. There were cars like the previously pictured Hot Shot. Radios, though, were the money makers. Some products were invented in-house and some were purchased patents. The purchased category included the Icyball and Shelvador. Although refrigerators with door-mounted shelves are commonplace these days, hardly anyone makes a fridge with a good built-in radio anymore. The Reado could deliver and print the news overnight but was done in by the Great Depression.

Crosley was the pioneer and long-time leader but Cincinnati’s TV and radio story goes far beyond that. The museum includes lots of memorabilia from others who spent some time living on the air in Cincinnati.  

Book Review
Isaly’s Chipped Ham, Klondikes…
Brian Butko

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It’s been said you should write what you know. Brian Butko may or may not believe that but there is reason to think he might believe even more in the corollary: Write what you want to know. I frequently get the impression that Butko enjoys the hunt as much as the kill, research as much as publishing, learning as much as teaching. Isaly’s Chipped Ham, Klondikes, and Other Tales from Behind the Counter gives me that impression in spades. This is Butko’s second run at the subject having published Klondikes, Chipped Ham, & Skyscraper Cones: The Story of Isaly’s in 2001. I’m not familiar with the earlier book but know that there is some unavoidable overlap. No surprise there. There is no doubt a multitude of reasons for the redo but I’ll suggest — and this is pure conjecture — that not only was it tackled in order to improve the story with knowledge learned in the intervening twenty years but as an excuse to learn even more.

In the middle half of the twentieth century, Isaly’s was a major regional presence whose farms, factories, and stores helped feed a whole lot of people in northeast Ohio and northwest Pennsylvania. The arc of that presence is not unique. It was a family business that saw the success and growth of the first few generations eventually fade away in corporate buyouts. I’ve lived in Ohio my entire life but we missed each other. My neighborhood has been the state’s southwest corner, and the closest Isaly’s ever came to my home was Columbus. Although a few Columbus stores remained in the late 1960s and it’s possible that I saw one, I have no memory of it. The company entered Columbus in 1935, peaked there in the 1940s, and officially began its exit in 1954. Everything I know about Isaly’s I learned from Brian Butko. Brian Butko learned from family members, former employees, company records, newspapers, and libraries. 

There was plenty to learn. Isaly’s operated dairy farms, manufacturing and packing plants, home delivery routes, and stores that ranged from ice cream stands to delis and restaurants. Milk, cheese, butter, and ice cream were the most notable items they produced. They rebranded coffee, soft drinks, chips, pretzels, and more. They served chopped ham in a way that made it their own.

The ham thing is a great example of the innovation that marked Isaly’s early history. Chopped ham is made by boiling pieces of ham and pressing them into a loaf. A patent for the process was filed in 1937 and granted in 1939. By the end of that same year, Isaly’s was serving it sliced extremely thin. The technique is called chipping. It eliminated chopped ham’s inherent toughness and was an instant success. It wasn’t long before ham sales exceeded ice cream sales. Isaly’s trademarked the term “Chipped Chopped Ham” in 1960. 

There were other innovations such as Skyscraper Cones, Party Slices, and Klondike Bars. Klondike Bars were the biggie. The only Isaly’s product to have success nationally, they are still available today although they are made by Unilever and no longer bear the Isaly’s name. They do, however, still bear the Isaly’s bear.

Butko makes all this learning fun. The book, both outside and in, is colorful and just looks like fun. Old and new photos abound along with reproductions of advertisements and various newspaper items. This is not a company history presented chronologically. It’s the story of people, places, and products presented in bite-sized pieces. Every chapter contains an even number of pages (either 2 or 4) so that each begins on a left-hand page with a colorful — and sometimes playful — title. The short chapters might make it easy to leave the book and return but they are so tasty that I bet you can’t read just one.

Unlike me, Brian has plenty of personal Isaly’s memories. He says that his earliest was of their macaroni and cheese. His excitement is evident when given access to a 3-ring binder of company recipes. He finds the sought-after Baked Macroni then writes, “I have yet to try the official recipe…”.  The fact that the recipe yields 60  servings might be one deterrent but I think I also detect a little fear that today’s result might not live up to yesterday’s memories. I, for one, encourage Brian to face his fear and look that macaroni right in the elbow. Finding 59 mac & cheese eaters should be easy.

Isaly’s Chipped Ham, Klondikes, and Other Tales from Behind the Counter, Brian Butko, Senator John Heinz History Center (2021), 9 x 9 inches, 148 pages, ISBN 978-0936340319

Available at the Heinz History Center in Pittsburg, PA, or their online store here

A Cosmic Reason for the Season — Reredux

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The following article first appeared in 2019 then reappeared in 2020 when the Fort Ancient winter solstice sunrise program was canceled. I have seen nothing specifically about the program this year but know that the site will be open between 7 and 10 AM on December 21, the day of the solstice. That’s a Tuesday which is a day that the site is normally closed this time of year. It is clearly being opened for sunrise and a program of some sort seems possible.

The article’s first publication occurred one day after the solstice. The next year, it was one day before. This year it is two days before. That shifting comes from our efforts to make Sol, Luna, and Earth play nice together. Most of this blog’s posts, and all three posts of this article, occur on Sundays. Days of the week usually shift by one each year because seven does not fit evenly into 365. The two day shift between the article’s first and second appearance was because seven is an even worse fit for 366 and 2020 was a leap year. The seven-day week isn’t quite as arbitrary as it might first appear but neither is it an intuitive unit of measure. The moon circles Earth every 29.5 days. The Egyptians divided that into three ten-day periods. Four eight-day Roman weeks or seven-day Babylonian weeks fit less precisely but could be tied, albeit imperfectly,  to the moon’s four phases. The Babylonian seven-day week was spread far and wide by Alexander the Great, and as Rome moved into Alex’s old stomping grounds, it began to think that way too. The western world’s week became pretty much established in 321 CE when Constantine declared that an official Roman week was comprised of seven days. This Sunday post precedes the winter solstice of 2021 by 2 days; 2 days, 4 hours, and 58 minutes to be precise. 

Calendars come and calendars go and Earth just keeps on turning. And it keeps on orbiting, too. The turning bit creates what we call days. The alternating periods of light and dark impact almost all life on the planet and humans adopted the day as a basic unit of measure pretty early on. What we call years comes from Earth orbiting the Sun. There was plenty of time for early humans to stare at the sky and not a whole lot to keep them from doing it. They couldn’t help but notice that things in the sky moved around. In time, some of the more observant among them realized that not all that movement was random and eventually some patterns were noted. I can’t imagine how exciting it was when some smart guy figured out that the sun popped up at the same point about every 365 days. Of course, that “about” would be very important.

The opening photo shows the sun rising yesterday over a “gateway” in the earthen enclosure at Fort Ancient. The photo at left was taken a bit later and includes a small mound inside the enclosure in the foreground. When the mound, gateway, and sunrise align, sunset will follow sooner than on any other day of the year. This is the northern hemisphere’s Winter Solstice. It is the day when the sun is above the horizon for less time than any other day of the year, and yesterday that amounted to 9 hours, 25 minutes, and 9 seconds. Although we talk about Solstice being a day, it is technically just an instant. It is the moment when the Sun is farthest north or south of Earth’s equator. It happens twice each year and happened yesterday at 23:19 EST.

Serpent Mound, another ancient earthen structure containing solar alignments, is a little more than forty miles southeast of Fort Ancient. The serpent’s head is aligned with the Summer Solstice sunset. Body coils align with Summer and Winter Solstice sunrises. For several years, a modern event known as Lighting of the Serpent took place there at Winter Solstice. It was discontinued in 2017. The picture at right is from 2014 which is the only time I attended.

Long before they knew anything about orbits and equators, humans knew the day of Winter Solstice was special. It is the point where each successive day receives more rather than less daylight. It’s the big turnaround that will eventually lead to the warmth of spring and summer. It is clearly a day worth celebrating and it has indeed been celebrated in many different cultures in many different ways.

During their existence, humans have developed a slew of calendar systems. Several actually remain in use today, but the Gregorian calendar is the one most widely accepted. In the late sixteenth century, this started replacing the Julian calendar which had been around for all of those sixteen centuries and then some. The Julian calendar had been created by folks who calculated that a year was 365 and 1/4 days long which was a lot more accurate than an even 365. They came up with the rather clever idea of adding an extra day every four years to balance things out.

We now know that a year is 365.2422 days long. A year is the length of time it takes Earth to orbit the Sun, a day is the length of time it takes Earth to rotate, and neither is adjustable. When the Julian calendar was first adopted, the northern hemisphere’s Winter Solstice fell on December 25 but it slowly drifted away. Someone in authority thought to put an end to this nonsense by declaring December 25 the official solstice. But those non-adjustable orbits and rotations kept doing what they were doing and the official solstice and actual solstice just kept getting farther and farther apart.

The Gregorian calendar, which we have used for roughly 400 years now, put an end to that. Like the Julian calendar, it considers most years to be 365 days long but has a more involved system of “leap years” that add an extra day. The result is that over a long enough period our years will average 365.2422 days in length. Not only did the new calendar eliminate future drift, it tried to correct for some of the previous drift by throwing away ten days. The calendar’s namesake’s full-time job was as Pope of the Catholic Church. Ditching those ten days moved the solstice to December 22 which is where it had been in 325 when the church was founded. Of course, some holidays that had been tied to the official solstice (which hadn’t been anywhere near the actual solstice for some time) would continue to be celebrated on December 25.

Anyone wanting a more complete discussion of calendars, solstices, and holidays will find one here. Additional information on Fort Ancient is available here.

Holly Days Under Glass

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I’d read that Dayton’s Arcade has been the focus of major restoration efforts and that some tenants have moved in and that others were on the way. But I had also read that most of the structure, including the 90-foot rotunda, was not yet open to the general public full time. I had completely missed some opening-related events that had been held in the rotunda but finally got my act together on the second day of Holly Days 2021. It’s an event that the Arcade has hosted in the past. The most recent, however,  was in 1993.

In recent years the Third Street facing side of the building shown in the opening photo is the image assigned to the structure in my mind. Almost all of my memories of the Arcade are, strangely enough, from the outside. My only memory of the inside is of a straight glass-topped walkway that I believe is behind the giant smiling face and was once lined with shops. I vaguely recall stepping into that area in the tow of an aunt on a mission. I have no recollection at all of what she bought but I’m fairly certain that we reversed paths once the purchase was made and I never reached the rotunda. I automatically assumed that access to Holly Days would be through that arch but it was not. My first view of the rotunda was from a normal hallway behind these bland glass doors on Fourth Street.

I had seen plenty of pictures so that first view didn’t shock me but it sure did impress me. I actually think I was more surprised by the bustling crowd than the phenomenal restoration work. I’m pretty sure crowds only bustle during the holidays and possibly only when their focus is gift shopping. About half of the rotunda was filled with potential gifts and this crowd was clearly bustling.

Crowds would have also filled the rotunda in its earliest days and they might have even bustled on occasion. It opened in 1904 as a farmers market which explains the turkeys, ram heads, and fruit decorating the upper walls. Note that cardinal directions, such as east and south, are marked on pillars along with some of the more popular intermediate directions like 159° and 212°.

During Holly Days, a variety of entertainment utilized the rotunda’s north side (i.e., the side opposite the big S). While I was there on Wednesday afternoon, the Miami Valley Dance Company performed selected dances from The Nutcracker.

How something like this could have come as close as it did to vanishing is a question I’ve asked before about other treasures but there is hardly ever an answer. In the end, we just have to be thankful when the wrecking ball is avoided and doubly thankful when something not only dodges the ball but comes back looking like this. If you are unfamiliar with the Arcade’s history, I recommend checking out the information provided here. I also suggest taking a look at Ronny Salerno’s 2016 The Dayton Arcade for a glimpse at what it came back from. Ronny even has a picture of the bit I think I remember.  

Another Covered County Covered

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When I took in Preble County Covered Bridges a couple of weeks ago, there was actually another Ohio county in the running for the “honor”. Fairfield County rivals Ashtabula County for the number of covered bridges and is much closer. Of course, Preble County is closer still and I decided to save Fairfield for a day when there was a chance that the trees would be more colorful. Friday was that day but, even though there were some mighty colorful trees here and there, I never did find that picturesque little bridge framed with orange and gold that I envisioned.

Unlike the rather spontaneous Preble County jaunt, I actually did some advance planning for this outing. I started at the Charles Holliday Bridge (#1) on the Millersport Lions Club Sweet Corn Festival grounds. This happens to be bridge #1 in the Fairfield County Covered Bridge Trail Guide but I did not visit the bridges in the sequence they are numbered in the guide. I started with the bridge farthest from my home then hit the rest in a very crude horseshoe pattern. The numbers following each bridge name are from the guide, however.

My second stop was at the R.F. Baker Bridge (#12) behind the Fairfield Union School. It’s not visible from the parking lot but directions from a friendly student got me there. This is the closest thing I found to that bridge framed by autumn colors in my mind’s eye. You have probably figured out that this is the bridge in the opening photograph and you may have also figured out that it is my favorite.

The John Raab Bridge (#8) is on private property and some distance from the road. I think it was possible that I could have gotten permission from the owner for a closer look but I just settled for a shot from the road with a longer lens mounted. That lens was still on the camera when I started to pull away and spotted a fox scurrying across the open field.

I made my Preble County bridge post a member of the My Cabbodles series but not this one. The reason is that two of Fairfield County’s listed bridges are inaccessible inside a park that is temporarily closed. I believe the address I had matches that of the pictured house although I saw nothing that indicated a park. Nonetheless, I think Mae Hummel Bridge (#9) and Shade Bridge (#14) are around here somewhere.

Only four of Fairfield County’s seventeen covered bridges remain at their original locations and three of them are pictured here. At first glance, I thought all three might have had the same builder but that’s not so. The Johnston Bridge (#7) was built by Augustus Borneman while the Mink Hollow Bridge (#11) was built by Jacob Brandt. No builder is identified for the Hanaway Bridge (#3).

Both of these bridges have been moved, but they still cross water and they are still in use although traffic is now pedestrian-only. The George Hutchins Bridge (#2) serves foot traffic in Alley Park while the McCleery Bridge (#10) helps folk cross Fetters Run on the Lancaster Bike Path.

The John Bright #2 Bridge (#6) has also been moved, still crosses water, and serves pedestrians. Like the McCleery Bridge, it is on Fetters Run and the Lancaster Bike Path. Its description states that it is the “gateway to Lancaster Festival concerts at Ohio University”. I’m guessing those concerts take place in the large open field beyond the bridge.

Rock Mill Bridge (#13) is the fourth covered bridge in Fairfield County surviving in its original location. The mill after which it is named also survives right next to it. The Fairfield County Covered Bridge Trail Guide claims that “At one time, every U.S. Embassy in the world displayed a photo of Rock Mill Bridge.” I haven’t yet found anything online to explain or confirm that so I’ve sent a query to the Fairfield County Ohio Visitors and Convention Bureau and will update this with any information I receive.

Here’s a bridge that has been relocated to a spot that once had water but no longer does. The Hartman #2 Bridge (#4) now sits astride what was once the Ohio & Erie Canal between Lock 11 South and Lock 12 South. The stone walls of Lock 12 South can be seen beyond the bridge in the third picture.

The Shryer Bridge (#15) is on private property with no obvious place to pull over so I really did grab a driveby shot of it. Inside Sycamore Creek Park, the relocated Zeller-Smith (#17) serves as the entrance to an arboretum. The Stemen House Bridge (#16) was relocated and shortened from 72 to 36 feet in length. Damaged and decayed parts were discarded during the move but the half that was saved was so good that now stands as the only public covered bridge in the county open to vehicles.

I had to add the word “public” to the previous sentence since this privately owned bridge is open to vehicles driven by the owner or friends. The Hizey Bridge (#5) once crossed Poplar Creek but has been moved to form part of an impressive private driveway.

If that park is ever opened and those two other bridges become accessible, I suppose I might go see them. Then I can republish these pictures as a caboodle. But the truth is that I was a little disappointed in the covered bridges of Fairfield County and it had little to do with the two hidden bridges or not finding the perfect wall of orange and gold leaves. It had to do with there being only two drivable bridges (one if you’re me) in the lot and so many that weren’t actually bridges at all anymore. By that, I mean those sitting in fields that don’t cross over anything that needs crossing. By contrast, six of the eight Preble County bridges were drivable and all nine of the Ashtabula County bridges I visited in 2019 were drivable. There are ten other covered bridges in Ashtabula County that I have not visited and about which I’ll make no claims.

On the other hand, even those that were sitting in someone’s yard, crossing nothing and accessible by no one, had escaped destruction. I’m reminded of something Tod Swormstedt of the American Sign Museum often says. According to Tod, the best way to preserve a sign is in its original setting doing what it was designed to do. Preserving them in museums and private collections isn’t nearly as good but is better than the scrap heap. I guess that applies to bridges, too. I prefer my historic bridges in the wild carrying vehicles over some body of water just like they were designed to do. Parks and private settings aren’t nearly as good — but they’re better than the scrap heap.

Following Morgan

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Once upon a time, a hostile military force passed less than four miles from where I live. I wasn’t here at the time. I wasn’t anywhere yet. It was 1863 and Confederate soldiers commanded by General John Hunt Morgan were on their way to reaching as far north as any Confederate soldiers ever would. That would occur on July 26 when Morgan and what was left of his troops were captured near Salineville, Ohio. On Monday, my friend, Terry, and I set out to retrace the Indiana and Ohio portions of Morgan’s three-state raid. Even though it was a slaveholding state, Kentucky did not join the Confederacy so Morgan was technically in enemy territory as soon as he entered the state but things really got interesting when he crossed the Ohio River. That’s where Terry and I started our raid following.

In the opening photograph, which looks across the Ohio River into Indiana from Brandenburg, KY, the raid is the subject of the metal marker and is noted on the stone marker. Both are overshadowed by a seventy-foot Confederate Veterans Monument that was moved here from Louisville, KY, in 2016. Louisville was beginning to think that distancing itself from the Confederacy might be a good idea but not so Brandenburg. Plaques at the monument’s new location tell its original history along with the story of its move. A “Southern Causes for the Civil War” plaque has a noticeable Confederate spin but does present something of a list of perceived causes. A “Northern Causes for the Civil War” plaque properly identifies a cause as “resistance to southern succession” then fills the panel with “things the Yankees did that pissed us off”.

Morgan spent eighteen days traveling through Indiana and Ohio. We spent four. We were traveling faster — and more comfortably — of course, plus we had the advantage of a path marked by signs and documented in guidebooks. The books used were “The John Hunt Morgan Heritage Trail in Indiana” by Lora Schmidt Cahill and “Morgan’s Raid Across Ohio” by Lora Schmidt Cahill and David L. Mowery. The signed route and the route described in the books do occasionally differ. I suspect that the signed route bypasses some of the rougher roads but I’m not certain of that and there may be other reasons for differences. Whatever the reasons, the differences are not many. We stopped at most of the sites marked by interpretive signs or called out in the books but did miss a few — sometimes intentionally, sometimes by accident. Only a few of those stops are covered in this post. It’s a brief recounting of our “raid”, not Morgan’s.

This is the Battle of Corydon Historic Site. I’ve included it to point out that the flag being flown to represent the Confederacy is the first official flag of the Confederate States of America. It is often referred to as the “Stars and Bars”. Artifacts from the steamboat Alice Dean, which Morgan sank after using it in crossing the Ohio River, are displayed here.

In the spirit of cordless phones, unleaded gas, and mirrorless cameras, this is a bridgeless creek. Terry looked over the ford at Big Graham Creek and spoke with a mother and a couple of kids beside the creek before deciding to take the plunge. Just as we started across, a pickup appeared on the opposite bank and entered the water without a pause. He passed us mid-stream on our left as a Jeep pulling a trailer followed us. Indiana may have to post some “congested ford” signs if that level of traffic continues.

Apparently, I grabbed no photos of the trail signs in Indiana. These are in Ohio. The first is at the Harrshaville Covered Bridge which was one of the few bridges crossed but not burned by the raiders. It was renovated in 2013. The U-turn sign is near Rock Springs Park where some of the raiders rested briefly. I’ve included it to show how well the driving tour is marked.

This is Buffington Island Battlefield Memorial Park. This is where things started to unravel for Morgan. Union forces met up with the raiders as they attempted to cross the Ohio River into the recently established (June 20, 1863) West Virginia. Some made it, some were captured, and some, including Morgan, escaped to run around Ohio for another week. “Run” is the appropriate word as Union troops were in close pursuit of the raiders from now on. Read the plaque on that stone marker here.

Here are a few of the more — but not most — interesting roads we traveled in Ohio. The low-water bridge on Hivnor Road over Island Run is as close as we came to a ford in the state.

Morgan’s men were involved in multiple skirmishes with federal troops, local militia, and even civilians. An encounter with Union forces at Old Washington left three of them dead. All three are buried in the town cemetery. In the past, these graves were marked by the X-barred Confederate Battle Flag, which has pretty much been usurped by modern white supremacists. I don’t know when the change was made. Here‘s a photo from 2010. There’s a closer look at one of those flag holders here.

The “Stars and Bars” was replaced as the official Confederate flag on May 1, 1863. It was not the official flag during any part of Morgan’s raid although it was undoubtedly carried by most of his troops. Here‘s a picture, taken at a spot nearer the end of the trail, of the flag, known as the “Stainless Banner”, that replaced the “Stars and Bars”. Of course, it’s unlikely that all flags were replaced in just a couple of months so any official Confederate national flag flown during the raid was probably the “Stars and Bars”. However, the flags at Old Washington and at the Corydon battle site contain just seven stars. That was indeed the way things started, but by November 28, 1861, long before Morgan headed north, the count had grown to thirteen. These flags are a welcome change from the battle flag and are closer to being the national flag at the time these guys died, but they’re still not quite right.

The yellow sign might mark the beginning of the most interesting road we traveled. The sign is itself rather interesting. “GPS route” is not an official designation so neither is “Not a GPS route. This and similar phrases seem to be a way of trying to tell truckers that, if their GPS is sending them down this road, it’s probably wrong. The road is quite steep and winding and neither Terry nor I got any pictures. We did get some shots at the bottom where Gould Road accompanies Long Run underneath the Wheeling & Lake Erie Railroad into Mingo Junction.

ADDENDUM Sep 3, 2022: This trip finally made me do something that I had been threatening. I bought a dashcam. Although I clearly do not have it mastered, I did get a video of this section on my second visit since our Morgan themed outing. Evidence that I’ve not mastered the camera is shown in the lack of sound and GPS and speed information but the “interesting road” can be seen here.

There was still a little daylight when we reached the point where Morgan and his remaining troops were captured. Terry took aim on the surrender marker and so did l. The plaque is here.

We pretty much used all the available daylight on each of the four days we spent covering the trail. The first three days had been completely dry and we even dodged much of the rain that started appearing on the afternoon of the fourth. We attributed our good luck regarding the rain to a black cat that had started to cross our path then stopped and turned around. We didn’t realize just how lucky we were until we got home. Wind and rain picked up as we drove from that “END” sign to our motel in Carrolton, but once we arrived, we temporarily lost all interest in weather. And weather wasn’t much of a factor when we drove home the next day. I was shocked when Terry called to tell me he had learned that several tornados had been sighted in Jefferson County on the day we reached the trail’s end. I was even more shocked to discover that, roughly half an hour before we took our surrender marker photos, a tornado had damaged twenty-three homes, a church, and a business about twenty-five miles away in Wintersville. Apparently, that cat turned around just in time.

ADDENDUM 26-Oct-2021: Even though this outing was not documented with daily posts in this site’s journal section, much of the mechanics behind it were pretty much the same as trips documented there. That includes the routing and tracking that allow locator maps to be made. So, I’m adding a locator map because I can.