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One of the few remaining covered bridges in southwestern Ohio and the only one in Butler County on its original site, this bridge was built in 1868-1869 to give access to a saw and grist mill owned by James B. Pugh on Four Mile (Tallawanda) Creek. The wooden frame three-story mill had a 16-foot overshot water wheel to power it. Pugh’s Mill ceased operation after two decades. The name of the span gradually changed to Black Bridge, likely because there was a white covered bridge downstream near present State Route 73. The Oxford Museum Association assumed stewardship of the Black Bridge in 1976 as part of the American Bicentennial celebration. Placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975, it was restored and rededicated in 2000.
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Following the establishment of the public land system in 1785, the Continental Congress appointed a committee, chaired by James Monroe, to establish government in the new territory north and west of the Ohio River. Drafted prior to the Constitution of the United States, the Ordinance of 1787 provided the mechanism by which prospective states would enter the Union on an equal basis with existing states. It also prohibited slavery in the new territory and pledged good faith in dealing with Native American tribes. According to this plan, the Northwest Territory became the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota in due course.
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The first Blaine Hill Bridge was constructed in 1828 as part of the National Road, the nation’s first federally funded highway. This three-arch S-shaped structure, 345 feet in length, spans Wheeling Creek (a tributary of the Ohio River) and is the longest original “S” bridge in existence on the old National Road. At a gradient of approximately 6.3 percent from east to west, it significantly eased, for the first time, the arduous 500-foot western climb out of the valley. Crumbling and in poor condition, it was saved from demolition in 1999 and in 2001 was designated Ohio’s official Bicentennial Bridge. Now tucked between the 1933 U.S. 40 viaduct and Interstate 70, it illustrates the earliest of Ohio’s three eras in national highway transportation.
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Major General William Sooy Smith was born in Tarlton on July 22, 1830. He attended Ohio University and supported himself throughout his college undergraduate career, graduating in 1849. He then entered the United States Military Academy at West Point to pursue engineering and graduated 6th in the class of 1853. In 1857, Smith established the private engineering firm Parkinson & Smith and made the first surveys for the international bridge across the Niagara River near Niagara Falls. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Smith joined the 13th Ohio Infantry, winning the commission of colonel in June 1861. After early victories in western Virginia, he was promoted to brigadier general in April 1862 for his gallant and meritorious service at the Battle of Shilo. (continued on other side)
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Charles Young in Ripley. Upon his death in 1922, Colonel Charles Young was the highest ranking African American officer in the United States Army. Born into slavery in Kentucky in 1864, Young moved to Ripley with his parents Gabriel and Arminta in the 1870s. He excelled academically, graduating with honors from Ripley High School in 1881 and accepted a teaching position in Ripley’s African American school thereafter. Encouraged by his father, a Civil War veteran, mentored by J. T. Whitman, superintendent of the school, and John P. Parker, entrepreneur and former Underground Railroad conductor, Young sought and accepted, in 1884, an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point. He was the third African American to graduate, in 1889, and the last to do so until Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. in 1936.
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The founders of what would become the Kings Creek Baptist Church first met on June 29, 1805 in the log home of local residents James and Ann Turner. The Baptist congregation continued to meet in people’s homes until 1816 when Taylortown founder John Taylor donated an acre of land to establish a burying site and a meetinghouse. Constructed of logs, this meetinghouse is considered to be the third Baptist church built in Ohio and the Northwest Territory. The original structure was replaced by a more substantial brick building in 1832, and the present Kings Creek Baptist Church was built on the original foundation in 1849. The church features classic Greek design and a grand steeple inspired by the work of the English architect Sir Christopher Wren. An educational wing was added in 1969. (continued on other side)
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Author, editor, and social critic William Dean Howells (1837-1920) was born in Martins Ferry, the son of an itinerant printer and publisher. Self-educated, Howells learned the printer’s craft early and took up journalism, rising to city editor of the Ohio State Journal (Columbus) in 1858. From 1871 to 1881, he was editor of the Atlantic Monthly magazine, a position of enormous influence in American literary tastes. Howells championed the work of Emily Dickenson, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and Stephen Crane, as well as several others. A prolific writer himself, he published over one hundred works. Howells is best known for his realistic fiction, including A Modern Instance (1882) and The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885). Many of his novels reflect his Ohio roots.
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At this location, during the American Civil War (1861-1865), a U.S. Army General Hospital was constructed on 29 acres of land overlooking Camp Carrington, a site used to recruit and train soldiers for the Union Army. Built in the spring of 1862, this hospital consisted of several wooden, ridge-ventilated buildings in which both Union and Confederate soldiers were treated for combat wounds and illnesses. Captain C.M. Moulton, U.S. Quartermaster at Gallipolis, upon instructions from Headquarters of the Union Army’s Mountain Department, contracted for the first building to be constructed in April 1862. (continued on other side)
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