Lush, green, verdant (leafy) southeast Ohio

Zanesville's famous "Y" (or is it "why"?) Bridge; on the National Road

We all have different criteria for what it means to be “Midwestern” but, having now spent a few weeks here, I think it is correct to categorize Ohio as a Midwestern state.

Admittedly, Ohio is awfully far east to be in the Midwest. However, if fields of corn and soybeans are one of the criteria for being Midwestern – and I think they should be – then Ohio is the quintessential Midwestern state.

As is usually the case when traveling, I marvel at the contrasts between other states and Texas.

Texas is a churning, vibrant cauldron of activity, its landscape, economy and people in constant, peripatetic change. By comparison, Ohio seems frozen in a 1980s ice age.

Coming from Texas, it is always a shock to see so many Whites and Blacks; and so few of anything else. Texas is far more diverse than most places, and most certainly it is more diverse than Ohio.

I suppose the people here in Ohio are friendly enough once you start talking to them but they seem much more reserved in general than most Texans. Another thing that I’ve noticed in talking to Ohioans is that many of them have at least one relative living and working in Texas, a byproduct I’m sure of a stagnant economy.

It is worth noting that there is good bit of oil production here, thanks to fracking. It’s nothing approaching the activity in the Eagle Ford Shale belt south of San Antonio, but you do see the occasional pump jack.

A typical Ohioan doing what Ohioans typically do on a typical summer day

The houses here seem to be smaller than in Texas but they sit on much bigger lots. And my god there is a lot of grass around them. That’s another reason that I’m convinced Ohio is a Midwestern state; vast expanses of lush, green, freshly-mown grass. The people in the upper Midwest must spend 90 percent of their non-working, waking hours sitting on top of a riding lawnmower. There are thousands and thousands of huge, open expanses of grassy lawns that seemingly have no purpose other than to be mowed. Is it the ambition of every kid in Ohio to grow up and mow grass like Forrest Gump?

Another thing Ohio has a lot of is trees. We read somewhere that when the American settlers began arriving in the 18^th Century Ohio was 95 percent forest. By the late 19^th Century it was down to 10 percent and today it is back up to 35 percent. Based on our observations so far, 35 percent seems about right (and it might also explain why the word "leafy" shows up so often in these blog posts).

One thing you don’t see a lot of here is new houses and cookie-cutter subdivisions; which makes sense I suppose in a state where the population has essentially stabilized.

We have spent the last week or so in southeast Ohio, the least populous, least urban, Whitest, poorest, least-educated, hilliest part of the state.

The advancing glaciers smoothed out northwest and central Ohio pushing ahead of it then leaving behind a “terminal moraine” of sandstone in present-day southeast Ohio that has been eroding ever since into today’s maze of hills and valleys and trees in the 32 counties that spread out along the Ohio River and are known, collectively, as “Appalachian Ohio”.

Our base for exploring this region was two state parks, one a few miles from the intersection of I-70 and I-77, the other smack in the middle of the “Hocking Hills” about 70 miles south of Columbus.

Marietta paddlewheelers on the Ohio with the I-77 bridge to West Virginia in the background

We spent a full day in Marietta, the oldest city in the state which sits at the confluence of the Ohio and Muskingum Rivers, a few miles from Parkersburg, West Virginia.

Perhaps one of the most significant actions taken during the Articles of Confederation era was the Northwest Ordinance that, in 1787, established a process for expansion into, and the creation of states from, the Northwest Territories; an area roughly bounded by the Great Lakes, and the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers.

In 1788, purportedly at the suggestion of George Washington, a company of land speculators led by a friend of Washington’s named Rufus Putnam set up shop at a place they called Marietta to honor the French Queen Marie Antoinette (acknowledging France’s support in the Revolutionary War). I assume MA was head over heels with excitement when the news of this great honor made it to Paris.

Putnam & Co. did quite well in the land-selling business and, by 1803, Ohio had grown so much it was admitted as our 18^th state.

We spent the better part of a day in Marietta, visiting museums and walking around the leafy town with its many historic homes and buildings. Probably the most spectacular building in the town is the Basilica of St. Mary of the Assumption, a Catholic Church that was completed in 1909 and has been beautifully restored and meticulously maintained. I'm guessing some guilt-ridden Catholic (sorry for the redundancy) in Marietta was compelled to pay one hell of a penance.

One of three remaining original "S" bridges from the National Road

We also spent a good deal of time exploring The National Road (also known as the Cumberland Road), one of America’s first big public works projects and its first highway. The road started in Cumberland, Maryland in 1811 and reached the Ohio River at Wheeling, Virginia (now West Virginia) by 1818. It then pushed across Ohio and Indiana and into Illinois before petering out in the economic malaise of the 1830s.

190 miles west of Cumberland

Each mile along the road a post was placed that gave distances not only to nearby towns but also to the road’s starting point in Cumberland. Several of these posts are still in place.

The road played a major role in the early development and settlement of Ohio. The general route of the road was used for U.S. Highway 40 which begat Interstate 70. Despite this overlaying of modern roads on top of the National Road there are still segments of the original road that are intact and visible, including some of its distinctive “S” bridges and some of the brick pavement that was added in the World War I era to facilitate the movement of heavy military equipment and supplies.

The eastern portion of the National Road in Ohio followed a path known as Zane’s Trace that was hacked out of the forest by a guy named Ebenezer Zane. The author Zane Grey is a descendant of Ebenezer’s sister, Betty Zane.

Oddly (or, at least confusingly) there is a Zane Grey Museum near Zanesville that is primarily focused not on Grey but on the National Road. There are, secondarily, some exhibits about Grey and there is also an extensive display of pottery (the local clay is, apparently, perfectly suited for molding and firing). I should also mention that the Zane Grey (and National Road and Pottery) Museum is affiliated with the John and Annie Glenn historic site in the nearby town of New Concord, the astronaut’s boyhood home. One ticket is good for both places.

To say the least this is a weird combination but, surprisingly, it seems to work and we enjoyed our stops at both places and learned a lot about John Glenn, Zane Gray, the National Road, and saw some really beautiful pottery.

And yes, in case you were wondering, Marietta and Zanesville both have local breweries and yes, we did patronize these fine establishments.

From the Salt Fork State Park we moved to Hocking Hills State Park, arguably the flagship of the Ohio park system.

A few of the hills in this part of the state, due south of Columbus, might be worthy of challenging West Virginia as the king of ups and downs; and the roads through these hills twist and turn tortuously along (and over) the contours. Driving five miles sometimes feels like ten.

So, naturally, after settling into our campsite we decided to drive the 30 miles (or was it 60) south to Athens, home of the University of Ohio which was founded in 1808 by our old friend from Marietta, Rufus Putnam. Athens is also home to a popular fried chicken restaurant and (surprise) a well-regarded brewpub, which might also have had something to do with us driving down there.

Athens is the quintessential college town, totally dominated by the university which sits smack in the middle of a maze of narrow, seemingly disconnected streets. Athens is hilly, leafy, old and pretty. The town and campus both have a southern feel to them. And the fried chicken was very good, both for supper and at a picnic lunch the next day at the Hopewell Culture National Historical Park.

The Hopewell Culture existed in present day southeast Ohio from about 200 BC to about 500 AD. The people did not leave the area, their descendants are part of modern day tribes. But the Hopewell “Culture” of building these amazingly large and complex mounds faded away and very little is known today about how or why these people built these incredible earthen structures; or why they stopped. Archeologists know that the Hopewell (the name comes from the owner of a farm that was home to some of largest mounds) were not a concentrated group. Most of them lived in small, widely dispersed, independent family units. However, for unknown reasons these dispersed people would come together for the purpose of building these huge earthen mounds, some but not all of which were burial sites. The mounds were precisely-designed geometric shapes that modern-day archeologist did not fully comprehend the complexity of until the advent of aerial photography.

What could possibly have driven these people to build these mounds, one basket of dirt at a time, for centuries? What made them stop? It is truly a fascinating place.

The genesis for what is today the national park was a massive World War I Army camp. When the camp was being constructed in an area with a lot of the mounds some efforts were made to preserve and study the mounds. Then, after the war when the camp was closed, a portion of the land that the government had acquired for the camp was set aside to become part of the newly-created national park service.

It’s a pretty cool place and the park service has done of great job of interpreting the fascinating and mysterious mounds built by the Hopewell Culture in present-day southeast Ohio some 2,000 years ago.

Speaking of odd native rituals; somewhere along the way we read about the Ohio Bicentennial barn-painting project. Ohio's bicentennial, of course, was in 2003 so it has been a while. But the gist of the story is that, in anticipation of the big event, the state commissioned a professional barn painter from Barnesville, Ohio (I'm not making this up) to paint the bicentennial logo on the side of one “prominently-located” barn in each of the state’s 88 counties. He got started on the project in the late 90s and finished just in time for the bicentennial.

Naturally, we wanted to see some of these barns. So, after some Googling, we found a web site that provides information about the location of the barns and we’ve made an effort to see and photograph several of them. Although a few have been torn down or have been painted over most of the barns are not all that hard to find and the logo on those we've found so far is still clearly visible. However, finding a safe place to pull off the road and take a photo has proven to be a bit more of a challenge. So far, so good though.

On the day we moved from Salt Fork to Hocking Hills we stopped in the energetic, nicely-preserved town of Lancaster to tour the childhood home of favorite son William Tecumseh Sherman.

Lancaster's favorite son

Sherman’s father was a lawyer in Connecticut and he took his trade west to the wilds of Ohio in the early 19th Century, stopping at the town of Lancaster which was on a portion of the Zane’s Trace that had left the National Road east of Columbus and veered southwest toward a crossing of the Ohio River near Maysville, Kentucky.

Sherman built a nice practice and fathered 11 children before he died (probably from exhaustion), leaving his poor widow with a nice house but no way to support such a large family. As was the custom in those days the widow's kids were “farmed out” to be taken in by relatives and neighbors. Despite this hardship the children were remarkably successful in their lives (and it gave the future general a chance to "really get to know" one of his step-sisters whom he the married; perhaps not the first southeast Ohioan to pursue this path of courtship). 

There was William of course (6th in his class at West Point, etc.) but also his brother John, a prominent and influential U.S. Senator for 30 years and the author of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. Another brother was a Federal judge and another was a prominent banker.

Lancaster is, rightfully so, quite proud of the Shermans.

The nice lady at the visitor center in Lancaster told us we absolutely needed to visit an old mill which proved difficult to find and was closed by the time we got there.

However, we did arrive just in time to snap a photo of a kid (second photo below) jumping from a cliff near the mill into the fairly tiny mill pond far below. It was quite a leap.

Of course, no trip to Ohio would be complete without a stop at the Pencil Sharpener Museum and it was our good fortune that this special place just happened to be located en route to Hocking Hills State Park.

Yes, these are all pencil sharpeners!

Water and time have done some nice things to the sandstone formations in the Hocking Hills and the state has constructed a very nice hiking trail that connects hikers to some of the "caves".

A cool front on Saturday dropped the temps and dried the air and we spent Sunday and Monday enjoying the trails, the hills and the weather. 

Hangin with the Hockingites

Monday evening we dropped by for the opening night of the Hocking County Fair in the town of Logan; and that probably wasn't the best idea because it may have given us a distorted view of the county's residents. The only minorities in the crowd appeared to be college graduates. On a positive note; I suppose its possible this may have been Take-Your-Cousin-On-A-Date night. I'm pretty sure I saw that kid that played the banjo in Deliverance.