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Built by people of the Adena or Hopewell cultures during the Early to Middle Woodland era (circa 800 B.C – 500 A.D), the Beam Farm Mound, 1200 feet northwest, has stood on the uplands overlooking Anderson Fork for two thousand years. Notable among the thousands of commemorative burial mounds built by these associated prehistoric cultures throughout the Ohio Valley, the Beam Farm Mound has been protected by its caretakers and remains unexcavated. Similar mounds have revealed formal tombs and evidence of elaborate funerary rituals.
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At Middletown, Ohio, on July 21, 1825, ground was first broken for the Miami-Erie Canal, which eventually linked Cincinnati and Toledo. The canal created much change in the region, including increased population and commercial, political, and industrial growth. Products grown and manufactured in this previously isolated area now had access to world markets. Prosperity reigned until the 1860s when railroad competition caused a slow decline in canal transportation. The canal was officially closed on November 2, 1929, again, as it had started, in Middletown. The canal bed was converted into a modern highway, known as Verity Parkway, which runs parallel to this park.
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Dinsmore Township School District #4 was formed in 1865following a decision by the township’s board of education that a school would be built in the center of every four sections of land, or every four square miles. This placement of school buildings gave township children the opportunity to attend school close to home and the chance at receiving a public education up to the eighth grade, Nine districts were created for the children of white households, and an additional district was formed to educate the children of the African American families, for a total of ten districts in the township. On June 11, 1866, the Dinsmore Township School Board purchased land from George Wenger to build the District #4 school near the intersection of Ohio Route 274 and Wenger Road. (Continued on other side)
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When St. Paul’s Methodist Episcopal Church was dedicated on January 6, 1884, an ornate brass chandelier presented by the Edison Electric Light Company provided illumination for the ceremony. Wired for electric lighting before its completion, St. Paul’s was one of the first churches in the nation lighted by Edison lamps. The Tiffin Edison Electric Illuminating Company, the first central electric power station in Ohio and the tenth in the United States, was built in Tiffin in late 1883. With a 100 horsepower boiler, a 120 horsepower engine, and two dynamos, it supplied direct current sufficient to light 1,000 lamps. It stood two blocks north of this site. The original brass “electrolier” still hangs in the sanctuary inside.
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The author of fifteen novels, ten plays, and more than 100 stories, Dawn Powell was born in 1896 in Mount Gilead at 53 West North Street and grew up in Shelby. She graduated from Lake Erie College in Painesville and moved to New York in 1918. Although some of her early works, such as She Walks in Beauty (1928) and The Bride’s House (1929), draw from her life in small-town Ohio, she is best known for her satiric portrayals of life in New York, including A Time to Be Born (1942) and The Wicked Pavilion (1954). Often compared to Dorothy Parker and associated with contemporaries John Dos Passos, Edmund Wilson, Ernest Hemingway, and Gore Vidal, Powell received the Marjorie Peabody Waite Award for lifelong achievement in literature in 1964. She died in New York in 1965.
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Charles F. “Boss” Kettering was a prolific inventor. While at National Cash Register, he invented the first electric cash register. Kettering founded the Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company (Delco) in 1909 and developed the electric self-starter for automobiles, first used in 1912 Cadillacs. He also developed no-knock Ethyl gasoline, lacquer car finishes, four-wheel brakes, safety glass, and high-compression engines; made significant improvements to diesel engines that led to their use in locomotives, trucks, and buses; and collaborated with Thomas Midgley, Jr. in the development of the refrigerant Freon. Kettering served as President of the Society of Automotive Engineers in 1918, co-founded the Engineers’ Club of Dayton (1914), and was director of research at General Motors Corporation from 1920 to 1947. His interest in medical and scientific research led to the founding of the Kettering Foundation and the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research.
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Scientist and explorer of the American West, John Wesley Powell moved from New York to Jackson with his family in 1838 and lived here until 1846. He developed an early interest in geology from his tutor “Big” George Crookham, a Jackson salt boiler, educator, and abolitionist. Powell served in the Union Army during the Civil War and lost his right arm at Shiloh in 1862. Later he became professor of geology at Illinois Wesleyan University. In 1869, he led a nine-man expedition in the first exploration of the entire length of the Colorado River, providing the first scientific description of the Grand Canyon. Subsequently Powell helped found the U.S. Geological Survey and served as its director from 1881 to 1894.
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Seeking an alternative transportation route to distant markets, many farmers and manufacturers in Ohio wanted to connect the Ohio River to Lake Erie with a canal. Beginning in Cleveland the Ohio-Erie Canal ran south, the length of the state, to Portsmouth. The canal was a total of 308 miles long, 40 feet wide at the surface, and 4 feet deep. The Ohio-Erie Canal opened for traffic along its entire length in 1832 and consequently effected great change. Population along the canal increased, and commercial, political, and industrial growth in Ohio boomed. Products grown and manufactured in this previously isolated region now had access to world markets. Profits for farmers and merchants increased, and the entire state economy was bolstered. With the rise of railroads in the 1860s, however, canals were destined to become obsolete because the railroad was a faster and more dependable means of transportation. The canal system ceased to operate altogether after a disastrous flood in 1913.