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
Dr. Chaboudy & the Origins of the Portsmouth Floodwall Murals
Visit the Scioto County Welcome Center and view Robert Dafford's large canvas portrait of Ava and Louis Chaboudy.
Dr. Louis Chaboudy is remembered as "the person who originated the idea of having murals painted on the Portsmouth…
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…
Southern Ohio Museum & Cultural Center
“The Kricker family’s long-term faith in the economic strength of Scioto County is a matter of historical record,” noted the Portsmouth Daily Times in May of 1978. Edmund J. Kricker, the seventy-nine year old chairman of the board and chief…
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.
Read more About Us