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Nurses at Portsmouth General Hospital (December 1937)
Portsmouth has long been a center for medical care, beginning with the city’s first professionally trained physician, Dr. Thomas Waller, who also served as President of the first City Council in 1815.…
Ohio Stove Company Workers (30 January 1942)
The foundry workers pictured here in January of 1942 worked for the Ohio Stove Company, which was first organized in 1872. Perhaps the oldest manufacturer still operating in Portsmouth, they…
One Hundred Years of Conservation in Shawnee State Park: Gov. Harry L. Davis and the Dedication of Ohio’s Theodore Roosevelt Preserve
The Theodore Roosevelt Preserve was dedicated at 3pm on December 5th, 1922, by Governor Harry L. Davis. It began with 20,000 acres as a "game and reforestation preserve." At the time of its…
Peerless Portsmouth and Detroit, the City of Champions: How the Portsmouth Spartans Helped the Detroit Lions Win the 1935 NFL Championship
The Portsmouth Spartans enhanced their rich NFL history when they moved to Detroit in 1934, became the Detroit Lions and won the 1935 NFL Championship. That Lions team was part of an amazing more than…
Picnic Point and Auto-tourism in Ohio's Little Smokies
With a spectacular view of the Ohio River, the hills of Kentucky, and the City of Portsmouth, Picnic Point in the Shawnee State Forest offers visitors a memorable experience. While there are a number…
Pond Lick Lake and CCC Camp Shawnee No. 1
The first of seven Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camps to call Shawnee Forest home, CCC Camp Shawnee No. 1 was located on Pond Lick Run, a tributary of Turkey Creek. The enrollees who called this…
Portsmouth NAACP Protests Jim Crow at the Westland Theater: Screening of Joe Louis's “The Spirit of Youth” Sparks Controversy in 1938
In February 1938, Joe Louis was just starting his reign as heavy-weight champion of the world, having won the title the previous June when he knocked out James J. Braddock. Portsmouth, Ohio, like the…
Portsmouth's African Methodist Episcopal Church and the Underground Railroad
Portsmouth's African Methodist Episcopal Church (Allen Chapel - AME) is the city's oldest Black religious society. In March 1837, "Father Charleston" organizd the church in the "Old Wheeler Academy,"…
Portsmouth's Early Jewish Community and First Place of Worship
Beneh Abraham, located at the corner of Second and Union Street, is among Ohio's oldest organized Jewish congregations. Beneh Abraham was incorporated in 1858 at a time when the total Jewish…
Portsmouth's First Presbyterian Church and the Antislavery Movement in Southern Ohio
In the decades leading up to the Civil War, the congregation now known as First Presbyterian of Portsmouth, Ohio, was a nexus of the antislavery movement in southern Ohio and it’s members, elders, and…
Portsmouth's Second Synagogue and Jewish Life in the Mid-twentieth Century
Following the construction of Portsmouth's first synagogue, Portsmouth's Jewish population expanded further in the early 20th century. The Jewish community created a new organization called the B'nai…
Portsmouth’s Basham Hill Reservoir: An Amazing (and Nearly Tragic) History
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as the City of Portsmouth grew so to did its demand for clean and reliable drinking water. Constructed in 1913, the little-known Basham Hill…
Portsmouth’s Third Synagogue and Contemporary Jewish Community
By 1974, Portsmouth’s Jewish community numbered no more than 120 people. The existing syngaogue at Eighth and Gay grew increasingly expensive to maintain and its size no longer fit the needs of the…
Raven Rock Nature Preserve
With its dramatic overlook, Raven Rock has long been an attraction for area residents and visitors. Its history is legendary, with some stories placing, at various moments in time, Daniel Boone and…
Rev. Edward Weed & the Piketon Anti-Abolition Resolutions: Piketon Courthouse Scene of Anti-Abolition Meeting in 1836
The Piketon Anti-Abolition Resolutions originated in a public meeting held on the 29th of July, 1836, not far from the banks of the Scioto River, at the original courthouse of Pike County, Ohio, in…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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 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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…