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Ross County’s first courthouse was Ohio’s first statehouse. The courthouse was erected on the Public Square in 1801. Thomas Worthington, one of the building’s superintendents, laid out the foundation. Chillicothe was the last capital of the Northwest Territory, and the final session of the territorial legislature met in the courthouse in 1801. Ohio’s first constitution was written here in 1802. On March 1, 1803, Ohio’s first General Assembly convened in the building, making it the statehouse. During a time of strained relations between Native Americans and settlers in Ohio, the great Shawnee leader Tecumseh delivered a speech here in 1807 to reassure citizens that the Indians would remain peaceful. The courthouse served as the statehouse from 1803 to 1810 and from 1812 to 1816. The building was razed in 1852 to make way for the present courthouse.
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On February 10, 1899, a United States Weather Bureau Station, operated by Steve Eveland, in the small hamlet of Milligan, Ohio, now part of McLuney, reported a temperature of 39 degrees below zero. To date, this is the lowest temperature officially recorded in Ohio. Milligan’s location in the flat valley of the Moxahala Creek made it susceptible to cold air masses drained from surrounding elevations. The record-breaking temperature in Milligan was recorded in the midst of a severe cold spell throughout Ohio that began on February 8 and ended on February 15, 1899 when temperatures reached a few degrees above zero. While Milligan can no longer be found on a map, it has been known as the coldest spot in Ohio for over one hundred years.
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Oil became a valuable resource in Ohio when significant quantities were discovered in Lima in 1885. The discovery brought an economic boom to Lima and northwest Ohio. News of the Lima oil field spread, attracting the attention of John D. Rockefeller, co-founder of Standard Oil. Against the advice of his board, Rockefeller invested heavily in Lima crude, despite its high sulfur content and foul odor. Storage tanks and pipelines for the crude sprung up rapidly. Having great faith in the ingenuity of his engineers and scientists, Rockefeller stockpiled the crude and sent Standard’s chief refining specialist, J.W. Van Dyke, to Lima to construct and manage the new Solar Refinery. Together with Herman Frasch, a German chemist, the two men perfected the technique to desulphurize the crude and turn it into quality kerosene and fuel oil.
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The West Liberty area, in the Mad River Valley, was the location of at least seven Shawnee Indian villages. This elevated site was the location of one of those villages. Several septs or divisions of the Shawnee nation lived in this area after being forced from their homes in southern Ohio. In 1786, together with Simon Kenton, Colonel Benjamin Logan’s army destroyed all the Shawnee villages in retaliation for the Indian raids in southern Ohio and Kentucky. Consequently, the remaining Shawnees moved to northwest Ohio near the present-day site of Maumee.
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Opened in 1926, Tanks Memorial Stadium became the home of the Ironton Tanks semi-professional football team. The Tanks were formed in 1919 and through the years played other semi-professional teams as well as teams from the American Professional Football Association that became the National Football League in 1930. In twelve seasons the Tanks had a record of 85 wins, 19 losses, and 14 ties, including wins against the Chicago Bears and New York Giants. The Tanks disbanded in 1931, but five players moved on to the Portsmouth Spartans, which became the Detroit Lions, and other NFL teams picked up four other players. Tanks Memorial Stadium is one of the few remaining roofed high school football stadiums in the country.
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Old Erie received its original charter on October 19, 1803, from the Grand Lodge of Connecticut. In 1808, the lodge joined with five other Ohio lodges to organize the Grand Lodge of Ohio. The first man to preside as Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Ohio was Governor Samuel Huntington, a member of Old Erie Lodge. [Masonic Emblem]
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Approximately 150 feet east stood the Hisylvania Coal Company Mine No. 22 tipple, in use from 1912 to 1925. The company name was derived from combining “Ohio” and “Pennsylvania,” home states of its founders. Coal came from the mine portal in small railcars, was cleaned and sized in the tipple, and loaded into gondolas for shipment. The Mine No. 22 tipple had a brick and concrete frame, likely the only one of this type in Ohio. When demolished in 2000, it was one of the last tipples still standing as a reminder of Ohio’s 1880-1920 coal boom and the Hocking Valley coal field’s contribution during this era.
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Daniel E. Weltzien, pilot and hometown son, dreamed of a flying community – one where every family would have a plane in their garage for work or play. In June 1965, the Williams Farm on Acme Hill became a runway with taxiways to every home. Young men and women came for flying lessons, and now traverse the world in space, the military, and commercially. Surviving fire, tornadoes, an earthquake, Ohio winters, and severe crosswinds, students still come here to take their first flight and become pilots. In Ohio, birthplace of aviation pioneers, this is “SKYPARK” THE FLYING COMMUNITY, a first in Ohio because a man dared to dream.
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