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Wolfden Lake & CCC Camp Gordon
Camp Gordon was one of seven Civilian Conservation Corps camps that were established in the Shawnee State Forest, beginning in 1933. Located in the Headwaters of Turkey Creek on State Route 125, Camp…
William Flagg's Stone Wine Cellar on Lower Twin Creek
For richest and best Is the wine of the West, That grows by the Beautiful River; Whose sweet perfume Fills all the room With a benison on the giver... "Ode to Catawba Wine" – Henry Wadsworth…
William Crawford & the Destruction of Salt-Lick Town
Jonathan Alder, a native of Virginia, is best remembered for his life as an Indian captive in Ohio during the 1780s and 1790s. He was taken prisoner and adopted into a Mingo family in 1782, towards…
Vastine Hollow Freestone Quarries
During the second-half of the nineteenth century, Vastine and other hollows of Lower Twin Creek were the center of a major stone quarry industry. Here workers for various firms, including John…
Union Mills and Lock 50 of the Ohio & Erie Canal
Ideally located, where the Ohio and Eric Canal turned to make its final descent across the Scioto River bottoms to its terminus at Portsmouth, Union Mills was developed to take advantage of the large…
Tremper Mound and Earthworks
Of the many peoples inhabiting the Great Eastern Forest in what is now the United States, the Hopewell Culture, spanning 50 BCE to 400 CE was one of the most artistic and geographically influential.…
Treber Inn, Henry Clay, & the "Self-Made Man" on Old Zane's Trace
Zane's Trace, the first Federally funded road through frontier Ohio, ran from Wheeling, in modern-day West Virginia, across the Hocking, Muskingum, and Scioto Valleys, to Limestone, (now Maysville),…
Tracy Shoe Company Building
Built in 1891 for the Tracy Shoe Company, this structure has recently been restored and repurposed by the YEI Corporation, a locally owned firm specializing in software solutions and other digital…
Thomas Gaylord and 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…
The White Front Restaurant on Chillicothe Street (c. 1965)
In 1936, Nicholas Sainopulos purchased the “White Lunch Car,” a diner that was housed in an old Portsmouth street car. Sainopulos “walled in the structure" and rechristened it the “White Front…
The Iron Man Game of 1932
: The NFL Spartans Defeat the Green Bay Packers
in the Greatest Football Game in Portsmouth Sports History
On Sunday, 4 December 1932, the reigning NFL champion Green Bay Packers faced off the Portsmouth Spartans in what has come to be popularly known as the Iron Man Game. Played in Portsmouth’s Universal…
The Greenup Slave Revolt and David Walker’s Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the United States of America: Resisting the Slave Trade near the Banks of the Ohio River
On a Friday afternoon, November 20th, 1829, with the Ohio River and the hills of the northern shore as backdrop, four rebel slaves were executed at the mouth of Little Sandy, just outside the town…
The Eclipse Livery and T.M. Lynn's "Dan Rice"
With its two large arched entryways facing Second Street, the Eclipse Livery Building (now the home of Wright's Farm Center) was constructed by T.M. Lynn in 1871 for his livery business.
Trustem…
The Drummer's Ghost in Dead Man Hollow
According to Harry Knighton, noted mycologist and founder of the Shawnee Nature Club, a crew of CCC Boys in the mid-1930s found the bones of a murdered pedlar when they were constructing Forest Road 2…
The Birth of the NFL Spartans at the Hotel Hurth
On August 20th, 1928, Portsmouth, Ohio football fans and civic leaders gathered at the Hotel Hurth for a dinner meeting and the launch of a new professional football venture. The meeting came just…
The Alexandria Stone & Alexandria Point Park
In 1938, during the North-West Territory sesquicentennial celebration, Portsmouth residents put on a "gigantic parade" through the city, carrying a large stone at the "head of the procession." The…
Tecumseh Comes of Age on the Allan W. Eckert Trail: Myth and Legend at the Mouth of the Scioto River
One need not refer to well-known bestseller lists to appreciate that more Americans are familiar with Allan Eckert’s telling of frontier history than with the writings of any dead or living, academic…
Stanton and McMahon's Smoke House: The Beginnings of Semi-Professional Football in Portsmouth, Ohio
Portsmouth, Ohio, is renowned as a football town, a community with a deep and abiding love of the sport - a place where both team and stadium history intertwine with the early years of professional…
Spock Memorial Dog Park
Spock Memorial Dog Park was officially opened August 9th, 2019. The park was named after Scioto County Sheriff’s first K-9 dog Spock who was killed in the line of duty while pursuing a suspect with…
Spartan-Municipal Stadium: Original Home of the NFL Spartans (Detroit Lions)
The drive to build a sports stadium in Portsmouth, Ohio, was first launched in 1925, when the city's civic clubs all backed a city-wide referendum to construct a city-owned recreational center, which…
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…
Sole Choice & the Portsmouth Shoe Industry
Explore the history of the sole-surviving remnant of Portsmouth, Ohio's once mighty shoe industry, Mitchellace, Inc. This "narrow fabrics" company emerged from the Panic and Great Recession of 2008…
Snake Hollow & the Old Forest Experiment Station
In the 1930s, Snake Hollow in Shawnee Forest became the location of a wildlife and forestry research station, which received its funding through state and federal conservation programs. One of the…
Selby Shoes & WPAY on Gallia Street (circa 1952)
WPAY pioneered Portsmouth radio, beginning its broadcasts on April 15th, 1933. By the early 1950s the station’s offices and studios were to be found on the north side of Gallia Street, next door to…
Runaway Slave Advertisements in Portsmouth, Ohio: Recovering the Story of Harriet's Escape on the Underground Railroad
As a river town, bordering the slave state of Kentucky, the newspapers of Portsmouth, Ohio, would occasionally publish runaway slave advertisements, paid for by slaveowners in Kentucky, Virginia, and…
Roosevelt Lake Overlook Trail & the Mackletree Shelter House
With the completion of the Roosevelt Lake Dam in 1934, the Civilian Conservation Corps enrollees of Company 1545 from nearby Camp Roosevelt, built two shelter houses for visitors to the new Roosevelt…
Roosevelt Lake and the CCC Stone Memorial: Memorializing the Men Who Built Shawnee State Park and Forest
In 1934, a segregated, all-black Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) unit of enrollees, known as Company 1545, dammed the waters of Mackletree Run and Turkey Creek, creating Roosevelt Lake, the…
Roosevelt Game Preserve Headquarters and "the Zoo": Ohio's First Nature Center in Hobey Hollow
The headquarters for Roosevelt Game Preserve and "Zoo," established in 1922, ought to be considered Ohio's first state-operated "nature center" in what is now Shawnee State Forest.
Located up…
Robert Dafford & the Portsmouth Floodwall Murals
The City of Portsmouth, located at the confluence of the Scioto and Ohio Rivers, has a history of public murals, from those painted in the 1930s by Clarence Carter in the lobby of the Post Office on…
Rev. William Williamson & Abolitionism at "the Beeches"
While the Underground Railroad in Ohio is often associated with members of the Quaker faith, in Adams County, the Presbyterians stood at the forefront. Among the earliest and most influential of…