Recent Stories
Mound Park and the Central Complex of the Portsmouth Earthworks
Portsmouth's Mound Park lays claim to the lone remnant of the central complex of the Portsmouth Earthworks that once spread across the Ohio River over the modern communities of Portsmouth, Ohio and South Portsmouth and South Shore, Kentucky. The…
John J. Minor's Boneyfiddle Barbershop
Born in 1828 in Albemarle County, Virginia, John James Minor settled in Portsmouth in the mid-1830s, not long after the city had expelled many of its black residents during its infamous “Black Friday” enforcement of Ohio laws requiring…
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.
Featured Stories
Bessie Tomlin & the Ohio River Flood of 1937
All the public schools in Portsmouth, Ohio, closed at the end of the school day on January 21, which, as luck would have it, was the last day of the semester anyway. Schools located in the flood zone were opened up for storing furniture (on the…
"Black Friday": Enforcing Ohio's "Black Laws" in Portsmouth, Ohio
In the 1830s, according to local lore, Huston Hollow, located eight miles above Portsmouth, became the location of an African-American community, which often served as the first Underground Railroad stop for figutive slaves who had crossed the Ohio…
Picnic Point & the Promotion of Auto-tourism in Ohio's Little Smokies
In the mid-1930s the Ohio Division of Forestry, with the assistance of the Civilian Conservation Corps, built Forest Road 9, from Pond Lick Run up to this dramatic ridge-top point. They cleared this spot and placed a picnic area in the center of a…
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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