Historic Appreciation Briefs : May-June-July 2006

Join the South Central Ohio Preservation Society for a fish fry and a home tour the first Sunday of August.

The meeting will start a little early, 1 pm, so we can enjoy the annual Hatfield fish fry at the Mountain House, home of Dard Hunter at 8 Highland Avenue, overlooking downtown Chillicothe. Bring lawn chairs, and if you live in Chillicothe, a salad or dessert.

Then at 4 pm we will tour "Buena Vista Place," the home of Globe Furniture's Steve and Linda Brown, located south of Chillicothe at 331 Cooks Hill Road. The house was an 1840 bridal gift to Eleanor Tiffin, the daughter of Ohio's first governor Edward Tiffin. The Browns have renovated the house and will graciously open it up to SCOPS members.

Please RSVP by August 3rd. If you need further information, directions, or want to join SCOPS for $15 annually, call 740 / 774-3510.

If you want to know something about that little school down the road or the one your grampa attended, here's the book for you. New this April, One Room Schools of Ross County, Ohio has almost 200 pages of histories and anecdotes, photos and maps, class portraits and comencement programs.

The book covers more than 230 schools, has almost 100 photos, and 120 illustrations. There is also a surname index.

Included here is an example photo page and an example map.

As you may have noticed in two articles in the Chillicothe Gazette (on June 19th and 25th), an archaeological dig is underway near an important Moundbuilders' earthwork. This is the Hopewell Works, off Sulphur Lick Road near its intersection with Maple Grove Road.

The area being explored is a field that is slowly being carved into by a creek. Since it is close to the Hopewell Works, there was a good chance that the people who built the earthworks left evidence there. But with the creek eating its way into the landform, that evidence is endangered. This project is a salvage dig to save what will be lost in a few decades.

The area was first surveyed with electronic equipment that gave archaeologists a good idea of what was under the surface. From that information, they chose a few areas to carefully dig. Firepits and remnants of pottery are some of what has been found.

The public is welcome at the dig, which is open until July 14th. It is opposite the new parking area on Sulphur Lick Road, just west of its beginning at Maple Grove Road, and at the beginning of the western segment of the Adena Recreational Trail. This Mapquest link can guide you there.

Incidently, this cut being made by the North Fork of Paint Creek is where I found a 16,500-year-old three-foot spruce log buried in thick clay. I dug it out about 20 years ago for my high school science fair project, and still have it, though it split into pieces. Treasures abound!

The site is open 9 am to 3 pm Monday through Friday. Any questions can be answered by Rick Perkins at Mound City, phone 774-1126.

---

Ross County is a special place for archaeologists. In addition to the dig descibed above, there are three other archaeological investigations that were made this summer. Not open to the public, they still will add to knowledge of the mystery of the Moundbuilders.

One is near the Sulphur Lick Road dig, looking into the Hopewell Earthworks itself. Another was exploring the Highbanks Earthworks near the intersection of US 35 and Old US 35. And a third was farther southeast, near the Liberty Earthworks off old US 35.

On the longest day of the year, June 21st, the setting sun aligns with the head of the world-famous snake effigy mound in Adams County. I and about 30 others were there to see the event.

The skies looked unpromising until the last few minutes, when the sun broke through under a distant thundercloud and shone its last rays on the gathered group.

Site manager Keith Bengtson gave a good talk on the history and theory of the earthwork, and the rules were relaxed to allow visitors to walk on the serpent.

I was going to write a short article on this, but the Gazette beat me to it. See the article in the Chillicothe Gazette issue for July 9th.