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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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The Bunker Hill House, previously the Bunker Hill Tavern, was built in stages between 1834 and 1862. The building is one of Ohio’s best representations of Federal-Greek Revival style “pike town” architecture. This architectural style is closely associated with pre-Civil War horse-powered turnpike transportation and lodging. The building was a way station for pioneers heading west and for drovers driving their animals to Cincinnati stockyards. It was also a stagecoach stop on Eastern Stage Coach Company’s Cincinnati Omnibus Line that operated daily between Cincinnati and Richmond, Indiana. Tavern operations ceased in 1858 due to decreased turnpike travel resulting from the newly completed railroad through nearby Camden. In 1862, a general store was established to supply the growing population in the area. The store closed in the early 1900s with the advent of the automobile, which made travel to larger, more distant stores viable. The Bunker Hill House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2001. (continued on other side)
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After American militia troops forcibly ended the 1812 siege of Fort Wayne, General James Winchester’s Army of the Northwest marched down the north side of the Miami [Maumee] River to stop or retard advancing British troops sent to aid in the siege of Fort Wayne. After three days of difficult march, Ensign James Liggett of the 17th Regiment, volunteered to lead a group of four spies or scouts to the site of the old Fort Defiance. Liggett’s small force was surprised and killed on or about September 25 near here. The Americans tried twice to recover the bodies, but met with ambush from hostile Native Americans sympathetic to the British. Their bodies were finally recovered and buried in a common grave. Besides Liggett, they included Wyatt Stepp, Guy Hinton, William Bevis, and Nathaniel Mitchell of Woodford County, Kentucky, all of Captain McCracken’s Company, 1st Rifle Regiment, Kentucky Volunteer Militia.
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Southeast of this point are the Big and Little tunnels. They were links in the 73-mile Sandy and Beaver Canal which connected the Ohio River with the Ohio and Erie Canal. Shifts of Irish laborers worked night and day with hand drills and blasting powder to cut the 1,060-yard Big Tunnel which opened for commercial use in 1850 and was abandoned two years later, a victim of the railroad.
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On July 4, 1796, Moses Cleaveland and his survey party landed at the mouth of Conneaut Creek on the southern shore of Lake Erie in what is today Conneaut, Ohio. The Connecticut Land Company, a private land speculation enterprise, had hired General Cleaveland as its agent to survey the Connecticut Western Reserve lands and to found a settlement along the Cuyahoga River, later named Cleveland. Group members pitched tents and erected a crude shelter to protect the provisions and survey equipment before celebrating the independence of the new country with toasts and salutes. The next day they organized into field groups to begin the historic survey of measuring the townships and ranges of the Western Reserve.
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A pioneer in automotive innovation, Charles Franklin Kettering (1876-1958) was born three miles north of Loudonville. He attended local schools and graduated from Ohio State University in 1904. He organized the Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company (Delco) in 1909, which later became a part of General Motors (GM). “Boss Ket” served as vice-president of research for GM until 1920 and held over 140 patents (including four-wheel brakes, safety glass, and “ethyl” gasoline), achieving his greatest fame for an all-electric starting, lighting, and ignition system. The electric starter debuted on the 1912 Cadillac and was soon available on all cars, helping to popularize them with women. In 1945 he helped establish the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Research Institute in New York.
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During the summer of 1863, General John Hunt Morgan, a Confederate cavalry leader from Kentucky, invaded southern Ohio with 2,460 mounted men. Throughout the campaign Morgan’s men plundered and looted before being captured by Union forces. On July 17, Morgan led his troops into Wilkesville stealing horses, sacking stores, and robbing private citizens. That night Morgan and some of his troops took lodging and meals with his first cousin Ruth Virginia Althar Cline and her husband Dr. William Cline. Morgan’s troops camped near the house of John and Elzia Levis where Elzia cooked for the men for fear they would harm her family. Additional soldiers of the raiding party stayed on the village square. Legend has it that while Morgan slept at the Cline Mansion, his black servant stole his looted money, and abolitionists Dr. Cline and Abraham Morris, helped him escape to freedom on the Underground Railroad.
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The W. Pearl King Prairie Savanna is a mostly undisturbed remnant of the once expansive Darby Plains Prairies. Prior to European settlement more than two centuries ago, the Darby Plains covered an area of more than 380 square miles west of Columbus. These prairies were an eastward extension of the Great Plains Prairie that Ohio State Professor Edgar Transeau termed the Prairie Peninsula in 1935. The W. Pearl King Prairie Savanna is a 20-acre vestige of a once large and varied habitat of native tallgrass prairie and oak groves. The prairie contains bur oaks, one of Ohio’s largest stands of prairie dropseed grass, and several other native prairie plants. Named for a former landowner, William Pearl King (1891-1960), the site has been owned and managed by Columbus and Franklin County Metro Parks since 2006.
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