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Public markets housing butchers, fish merchants, and produce vendors were once the primary source of perishable foods for residents of America’s cities. Cincinnati operated nine in 1859. Only Findlay Market, built here in 1852, survives. Cincinnati’s lost indoor markets include: Fifth Street Market: 1829 to 1870, Fifth between Vine and Walnut Wade Street Market: 1848 to 1898, corner of Wade and Bauer Avenue Canal Market: 1829 to 1864, Court between Vine and Walnut Court Street Market: 1864 to 1914, replaced Canal Market Jabez Elliott Flower Market: 1890 to 1950, Sixth between Elm and Plum Sixth Street Market: 1895 to 1960, Sixth between Plum and Western Row Pearl Street Market: 1901 to 1934, Market between Sycamore and Broadway
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Formed by erosion of Cleveland shale and cascading 48 feet, making it the tallest waterfall in the county, the Cataract Falls of Mill Creek powered the gristmill and sawmill built by William Wheeler Williams and Major Wyatt in 1799. The mills, commissioned by the Connecticut Land Company to encourage settlement of the Western Reserve, attracted people to Newburgh. Cleveland finally outgrew bustling Newburgh by 1830 and eventually annexed most of it. The founding of the Cleveland Rolling Mill in Newburgh, beginning with the firm of Chisholm, Jones, & Company in 1857, precipitated the growth of the steel industry in Cleveland. By 1868, under the management of Henry Chisholm, it became one of the first in the nation to produce steel using the Bessemer process. The Rolling Mill, later the American Steel and Wire Company (a subsidiary of U.S. Steel), purchased the millworks at the falls in 1872.
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The earliest improved public road west from Lake Erie to the Indiana border, the Territorial-Indiana Road was built by the U.S. Government in 1834-1835 through the Cottonwood Swamp, then a major obstacle to travel. It ran parallel to the Harris Line, the northern boundary of a narrow strip of land contested by Ohio and Michigan from 1803 until 1836, when Ohio annexed it following the “Toledo War.” Completion of the 110-mile road gave farmers and settlers much improved access to markets and new western lands. It became the Indiana Plank Road in 1848 and later Sylvania-Metamora Road. The Toledo and Western Electric Railway’s parallel right-of-way was completed in 1902.
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The Michelson-Morley Experiment, conducted at Western Reserve University in July 1887, provides the earliest direct evidence that would later support Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity. Albert A. Michelson, professor of physics at the Case School of Applied Sciences, and Edward Morley, professor of chemistry at Western Reserve University, tested the prevailing scientific theory that light waves travel faster downwind and slower against an upwind as they travel through a substance once thought to permeate space called aether. Finding no differences in the velocity of light waves traveling in different directions with respect to Earth’s motion around the sun, the experiment’s results baffled a generation of scientists until Einstein solved the riddle by formulating a new understanding of time and space. In 1907, Michelson, then head of the physics department at the University of Chicago, became the first American scientist to earn the Nobel Prize; he did so in physics.
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A salt spring, located about a mile west of this site, was the primary attraction for immigrants to the Western Reserve territory in the mid-1700s. Prior to European-American settlement, Indians used the springs, boiling the water to extract the salt and using it for preserving meat among other uses. In 1755, surveyor Lewis Evans underscored the importance of the springs by noting it on his “General Map of the Middle British Colonies in America.” This enticed immigrants from western Pennsylvania to the region. In addition to the salt itself, the abundance of wildlife near the spring ensured good hunting in the area. (Continued on other side)
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Almon Ruggles (1771-1840) came to Ohio from Connecticut in 1805 and led survey teams that divided the Firelands section of the Connecticut Western Reserve into townships. The Firelands was territory granted to Connecticut residents whose property was destroyed by the British during the Revolutionary War. Ruggles purchased a lakeshore section of this surveyed land for one dollar per acre, which is now known as Ruggles Beach. After settling permanently in Ohio in 1810, he established a farm, built gristmills, and worked for different Connecticut land proprietors. Ruggles also served in the Ohio Senate, the Ohio House, and was briefly appointed as associate judge of Huron County. Upon his death, his ashes were buried on part of his property, now known as Oak Bluff Cemetery.
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The land on which Coventry Township is situated was ceded in 1785 to the United States by the Delaware, Chippewa, Ottawa, and Wyandot tribes under the Treaty of Fort McIntosh. The area was a choice location for Native Americans, settlers, and fur traders due to the abundant bodies of water and proximity to the Portage Path, a land connection between the Tuscarawas and Cuyahoga rivers and Lake Erie. In 1788, Coventry Township was initially part of Washington County, the first county formed in the Ohio Territory. After Moses Warren finished a survey in 1797, a succession of county splits located Coventry Township in Jefferson County, Trumbull County, Portage County, and, finally, Summit County in 1840. The township originally encompassed Summit Lake and the lands south to the southern line of the Western Reserve (Green-New Franklin lines). Daniel Haines was the first resident to settle in Coventry Township in 1806.
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Near this site in Over-The-Rhine was one of the original Kroger Grocery & Baking Company stores, where Bernard H. Kroger began serving the Over-the-Rhine area in 1902. Kroger was 23 years old when he opened his first store, The Great Western Tea Company, at 66 East Pearl Street near the Cincinnati Riverfront in July of 1883. By 1902, when the company was incorporated as the Kroger Grocery & Baking Company, Kroger operated 40 stores. By 1908, the company had grown to a chain of 136 stores in Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus, and Northern Kentucky, and began making deliveries to customers with 200 mule-drawn wagons. Kroger was the first to combine meats and groceries under one roof and the first grocery company to operate its own bakery. Currently called the Kroger Co., the grocer is a major contributor to the local economy.