Recent Stories
Recovering Portsmouth's Past in Huston's Stone Front Building
Coming Soon! The story of the Huston Stone Front Building, the first three-story building constructed on Second Street. Since its original construction in the early 1850s by Milton Kennedy and Joseph Ashton it has played a role in the history of the…
Portsmouth National Bank & the Elk Building
Coming Soon! The story of the Elk Building and Portsmouth National Bank. Built in 1892 by the Elks fraternal order, this signature Boneyfiddle commercial building was home to the Portsmouth National Bank, which had been originally organized in 1866…
Albert McFarland's Tribune Building
Coming Soon! The story of the Tribune Building. Albert McFarland constructed this two story commercial structure to house the office and pressroom of the Portsmouth Tribune, one of the city's oldest newspapers, which traces it origins to the Scioto…
Eliza Trotter Building on Second Street
Coming Soon! The story of Eliza (Denison) Trotter, a pioneering Portsmouth businesswoman, who launched her millinery retail store in 1858 and constructed the "Trotter Building" on Second Street in the early 1870s.
Over the years and at…
Peter Kinney House on Front Street
Coming Soon!
The story of Peter Kinney and Morgan's Civil War Raid. In the summer of 1863, Col. Kinney would declare martial law and oversee the defenses of the city in expectation of the arrival of Morgan's Raiders.
Thomas Gaylord & the Beginning of Portsmouth's Iron Industry
Thomas Gould Gaylord provided the capital and entrepreneurial drive to establish Portsmouth as a major center for iron manufacturing, securing his pig iron from the numerous charcoal furnaces in what was to become known as the Hanging Rock Iron…
Featured Stories
Abandoned Alexandria, Ohio
The confluence of the Scioto and Ohio Rivers has long been the site of human habitation, from the ancient Adena and Hopewell to the Shawnee and, lastly, to the Americans of today. The mouth of the Scioto has seen the rise and fall of many villages,…
Sanford, Varner & Co. Factory Building at Third & Chillicothe Streets
Portsmouth may be best remembered for its shoe and steel manufacturers, which dominated the city from the 1830s to the 1970s, but in the years after the Civil War, when the city was first connected into the national rail network, Portsmouth had a…
Portsmouth’s Basham Hill Reservoir
Portsmouth’s first water works plant was built in 1871 on the banks of the Ohio River. It was located in an area that is, today, just outside the floodwall behind Shawnee State University. That original water plant left much to be desired in terms…
Featured Tours
Scioto Historical
A project by Andrew Feight, Ph.D.Scioto Historical is an educational mobile app and website that puts the history of southern Ohio at your fingertips. Learn about American and local history through map-based, interactive, multimedia presentations and experience professionally curated virtual historical tours on your laptop, tablet, or on a screen in your classroom. With its mobile app, Scioto Historical can guide you to historical locations and augment any walking or driving tour.
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