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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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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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The museum of the Mercer County Historical Society, the Riley Home represents six generations of the Riley family in the county. The first Riley to arrive here was Captain James Riley, who surveyed the area in 1819, after it was opened to American settlement following the Treaty of Saint Marys in 1818. Captain Riley was elected to the Ohio General Assembly in 1823. Captain Riley’s son, James Watson Riley platted Celina in 1834, was Mercer County’s Clerk of Courts, and then represented the area in the Ohio General Assembly beginning in 1843. (Continued on other side.)
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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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These three stone water towers were erected by local craftsmen in 1892 and serviced the Ohio Hospital for Epileptics until 1950. The sandstone of the uncoursed masonry walls was quarried from the surrounding hills. The hospital facility, a former Union Hospital site during the Civil War, was the first of its kind in the United States. The towers were restored in 1981-1982.
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Digging of the Ohio-Erie Canal began in 1825, and the first canal boat navigated the Deep Cut at Licking Summit in 1831. The surrounding swamps were drained to create the Licking Reservoir, today known as Buckeye Lake, in order to supply adequate water for the canal going north to Coshocton and south to Circleville. After the canal route was established, the state engineers discovered that there was a ridge of hills located south of the proposed reservoir through which they would have to cut the canal. Since it was impossible to raise the level of the reservoir, the ridge had to be cut down to the level of the reservoir. This “Deep Cut” marks the deepest part of the canal at 32 feet and runs south from Millersport for nearly two miles. Unskilled laborers, primarily Irish immigrants, tirelessly dug the canal using picks, shovels, wheelbarrows, and oxen-cart.
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This historic inn began serving travelers on the old Portage-Columbiana stage road (now Tallmadge Road) in 1832. Two major stage lines, one from Cleveland to Wellsville (the closest Ohio River port) and the other from Cleveland to Pittsburgh, passed through Palmyra in the early 1800s. Originally a simple two-story Greek Revival-style building, it had its third story added in 1888 when it became a lodge for the Knights of Pythias fraternal organization. It served as a private residence and store for most of the 20th century. The Palmyra Center Hotel was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.
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At this site on September 17, 1952, an assembly of Louisville citizens led by Olga T. Weber joined U.S. Congressman Frank T. Bow in commemorating the completion of U.S. Constitution on September 17, 1787. With the goal of promoting a wider understanding of citizens’ rights and responsibilities, the Committee for the Preservation of the Constitution lobbied for both state and national observances. In 1953, Governor Frank Lausche proclaimed September 17 as Constitution Day in Ohio; subsequently President Dwight D. Eisenhower proclaimed the week of September 17, 1955 as Constitution Week. The committee, incorporated in 1962, has marked the anniversary each year since–making this Louisville tradition the nation’s longest continuing observance of Constitution Day.
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