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Dr. Chaboudy and the Origins of the Portsmouth Flood Wall 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…
Concord Presbyterian Church & the Rev. James H. Dickey
Ross County's Concord Presbyterian Church was home to a number of influential abolitionist activists and conductors on the Underground Railroad. Concord's congregation has its roots in nearby South…
Harry Knighton Trail & the Shawnee Nature Club
Coming soon! The story of the Shawnee Nature Club and the Harry Knighton Trail in the Shawnee State Park.
Harry Knighton, internationally known for his study of fungi, helped found the North…
Rev. Samuel Crothers & the Abolition Society of Paint Valley
Coming soon! Learn about the founding of the Abolition Society of Paint Valley, one of Ohio's and the nations earliest abolition societies. In 1833, Rev. Samuel Crothers and the Greenfield…
Harry Wagner & the Origins of Boy Scout Camp Oyo
"HOW!" rang the greeting.
"It is indeed a pleasure for me, as a representative of the people who once inhabited this very spot, to come before you, our White Brothers, who are now sitting about our…
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…
Rev. James Gilliland & Red Oak Presbyterian Church
Coming soon! The story of Red Oak Presbyterian Church and the Rev. James Gilliland, who helped establish the Underground Railroad in southern Ohio. Gilliland moved to southern Ohio when church…
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…
Gharky & Waller at Carey's Run Cemetery
The lives of David Gharky and Dr. Thomas Waller are forever intertwined. These two pioneer settlers first made their home at Alexandria, on the West Side of the Scioto's Old Mouth, but when that…
Columbus & the Santa Maria Ship/Museum
Billed as "the world's most authentic, museum-quality representation of Christopher Columbus' flagship," the Santa Maria Ship/Museum has been anchored to the banks of the Scioto River in the heart of…
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…
Copperhead Fire Tower
In 1924, after purchasing the first lands for the creation of the Shawnee State Forest, the Division of Forestry constructed three fire towers in the region to help protect the state's newly acquired…
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…
Nathaniel Massie and Indentured Servitude at Buckeye Station, Adams County, Ohio
Buckeye Station, the one-time home of Nathaniel Massie and his brother-in-law, Charles Willing Byrd, lays in ruins, marked now by a cell phone tower on what was once known as Hurricane Hill. An…
Logan's Elm & Commemorating Dunmore's War
At the Logan Elm State Memorial, near Circleville, in Pickaway County, Ohio, visitors can read the frontier history of the Scioto Valley written in bronze and stone. First conceived in the fall of…
Bessie Tomlin and the Ohio River Flood of 1937
When the Flood of 1937 hit Portsmouth, Bessie Tomlin, like others in the city's African-American neighborhood, first found safety on the second floor of the Booker T. Washington School. But soon she…
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…
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…
Joe Logan & the Fugitive Slave Experience in Southern Ohio: West Union, Ohio's Olde Wayside Inn and the Underground Railroad
The Olde Wayside Inn in West Union, Adams County, has gone by many names over its two-hundred plus years of existence. Originally known as Bradford's Tavern, for a while in the 1870s and 80s, area…
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),…
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…
Major John Belli and the First American Settlement on Turkey Creek
In the summer of 1787, John O'Bannon surveyed a one-thousand acre parcel at the Mouth of Turkey Creek in what would become Scioto County, Ohio. O'Bannon selected these lands for Larkin Smith, a…
Lower Shawnee Town and Céloron's Expedition of 1749
Beginning in the late 1730s, the Shawnee Indians established one of their principal villages here. Some sixty years earlier, in the 1670s and 80s, the Shawnee had been expelled from the Scioto and…
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…
Floyd Chapman & the American Black Bear
Floyd Chapman was a Field Ecologist with the Ohio Division of Conservation and spent much of the later part of the 1930s researching his dissertation on the “Development and Utilization of Wildlife…
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…
CCC Camp Bear Creek
Camp Bear Creek was one of the seven Civilian Conservation Corps camps located in the Shawnee State Forest, beginning in 1933. The camp, with its barracks, officers quarters, and out buildings is now…
Bear Lake & Horse Camp
Bear Lake is situated deep in the heart of Shawnee State Forest and only adds to the scenic beauty of what is now known as the Horse Camp. Civilian Conservation Corps enrollees from Camp Bear Creek…
CCC Camp Scioto & McBride Lake
In the mid-1930s, Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) enrollees from nearby Camp Scioto built McBride Lake in the headwaters of Pond Run, a small tributary of the Ohio River.
One of six lakes…
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…