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America’s first concrete streets were those which surrounded this court house. Concrete was first used in 1891 to provide an 8-foot strip along Main Street where horses were hitched. Two years later Court Avenue was paved with concrete made from native marl supplied by the Buckeye Cement Company, 8 miles to the northeast. This marker was erected in 1968 at the 75th anniversary of the paving of Court Street.
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One of America’s largest and best known steam locomotive builders, the Lima Locomotive Works built 7,752 locomotives between 1879 and 1951. It rose to success building the patented Shay geared locomotive, an innovative design that became the standard for railroad logging. In the early 20th century Lima began building mainline locomotives, exemplified by the “Super-Power” 2-8-4 Berkshire, which used superheated steam and an enlarged firebox for unprecedented power and speed. Introduced in 1925, it showcased Lima’s technological prowess. The “loco works” employed workers of many nationalities, fostering a legacy of ethnic diversity in Lima. Often several generations of the same family worked in the same shop, a practice that encouraged loyalty and a tradition of craftsmanship passed to succeeding generations.
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Here, on April 10, 1779 during the Revolutionary War, David Zeisberger founded one of the five Delaware Christian missions to occupy the Tuscarawas Valley between May 3, 1772 and September 8, 1781. Living at the Lichtenau mission near the Delaware capital of Goschachgunk (presently Coshocton, Ohio), Zeisberger feared that the Delaware nation was about to break their neutrality and join the British led Indians. Accordingly, he decided to disperse his Christian congregation and move his converts thirty-five miles up river to a place of safety in this large alluvial plain adjacent to the Tuscarawas River.
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Jonas Stutzman, from Somerset County, Pennsylvania, came to this site in 1809 to clear land for farming and to build a log home for his family. He was the first permanent settler in the eastern portion of what would in 1825 become Holmes County. Jonas and his wife Magdalena Gerber Stutzman were of the Amish faith–descendants from a group of strict Protestant Anabaptists with origins in Switzerland and Holland and dating from the 16th -century Protestant Reformation. Some of their beliefs, including separation of church and state, refusal to take oaths, pacifism, and believer’s baptism, were perceived as threats to the state church and government. Persecuted by both Catholics and Protestants, Anabaptists migrated and some came to the New World, many at the invitation of Pennsylvania’s William Penn. The Stutzmans and other early Amish pioneer setters-Millers, Hershbergers, Hochstetlers, Weavers, Troyers, Masts, and Schrocks-founded here what has become the largest Amish settlement in North America.
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Restored in 1963, the Germantown Covered Bridge on East Center Street, spanning Little Twin Creek, was 93 years old and is reputed to be the only existing covered bridge of its kind in the world. For 41 years this unique inverted bow string truss covered bridge spanned Little Twin Creek on the Dayton Pike in Germantown, Ohio. In 1911 it was removed to its present location where it has been restored and beautified as a link with Ohio’s early history. It is a symbol of individual initiative in America’s early history.
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“Wind increasing in volume. Get no chance to . . . ” These were the last words from the doomed Navy airship Shenandoah, caught in a violent storm and crashing 7 miles southwest of this spot near Ava at dawn, September 3, 1925. Fourteen of its crew were killed. While souvenir hunters stripped the wreckage, a nation questioned the value of huge, rigid dirigibles, the last crashing in 1935. Smaller blimps replaced the dirigible as America’s lighter-than-air sentinels of the sky.
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“Wind increasing in volume. Get no chance to . . . ” These were the last words from the doomed Navy airship Shenandoah, caught in a violent storm and crashing 7 miles southwest of this spot near Ava at dawn, September 3, 1925. Fourteen of its crew were killed. While souvenir hunters stripped the wreckage, a nation questioned the value of huge, rigid dirigibles, the last crashing in 1935. Smaller blimps replaced the dirigible as America’s lighter-than-air sentinels of the sky.
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The Cranberry Prairie, southwest of this marker, is a part of Ohio’s natural history. The place was named for the cranberries that grew in a swamp here prior to drainage of the area. The Cranberry Prairie was created by centuries of peat accumulation in a late Ice Age lake that formed at the base of St. John’s Moraine. Paleo-Indian or Early Archaic peoples probably killed the elk whose skeleton was dug up here in 1981. This elk was dated at approximately 7400 B.C. By the 1860s, immigrant German farmers had begun transforming the swamp into fertile farmland. “Wild Bill” Simison, a legendary inhabitant, lived in the swamp and settlers respected him for his knowledge of the area. By the turn of the nineteenth century, Granville Township School #7, St. Francis Catholic Church, and Bertke’s Store stood at the edge of the Cranberry Prairie.
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