Along busy U.S. 33 in Mercer County, traffic often slows or even stops when drivers catch a glimpse of Karen Elshoff’s roadside stand.
After she read that story, she rounded up all the gourds and pumpkins she could get her hands on and painted them, just for fun. One year, she decided to take a load to a craft show in nearby Fort Recovery and, to her surprise and delight, she sold every single one.
Before the 19th century, wild buffalo (bison) dominated the North American continent — with individual herds covering 400 square miles or more and taking days to ride through on horseback. It’s estimated the bison population was more than 60 million at its peak.
“Buffalo herds in the East were never huge, never teeming, never rivaling the truly vast herds that thundered across the Great Plains until the latter half of the 19th century,” Belue says. “Eastern buffalo herds often numbered 100 head or less, and droves of fewer than 20 were common.”
On November 14, 1935, nearly 500 people, including local, state, and national dignitaries, gathered in the shadow of the municipal light plant on the west bank of the Great Miami River in Piqua to watch as a wooden pole was set into the ground.
Joslin grew up in Sidney, and moved to Wyoming after high school to be a sheep rancher. After six years, he returned to Ohio to farm, and in 1917, he helped found the Shelby County Farm Bureau, laying the foundation for cooperative action. Reserved but determined, Joslin became known for his ability to earn trust and get results — he was well known for his mantra, “Let’s get it done” — and in 1935 he was the county farm bureau’s president.
John Herzig was quite pleased with the latest addition to his ever-so-slightly notorious collection.
Higgins later gained fame as the movie mutt, “Benji,” and to Herzig, Inn’s story of a lifetime of rescuing dogs from euthanasia and boarding them until he could find them homes is one that deserves to be remembered. “He supported at least 2,000 animals,” Herzig says. When Higgins eventually died after a long and fulfilling life, Inn gave her funeral, and Herzig has the program.
Farming has long been the backbone of Ohio’s economy. Even if you don’t farm today, you likely have friends or family who do, or ancestors who once did.
Ohio’s electric cooperatives have a long history with the farming community. Years ago, rural residents (many of them farmers) worked together to bring electricity to their homes and towns, changing life in the countryside forever.
If you enjoy water paddle sports such as kayaking and canoeing, but would rather not deal with the challenges and dangers of whitewater rapids, I have just the place for you.
Kerns grew up in a suburb of Columbus, and says she had an intense interest in the outdoors, even as a kid. “I took a summer course in marine biology during high school, and that experience really helped guide my future undergrad and postgraduate studies and ultimate career path,” she says.
Marblehead resident Cathy Bertovich has been driving Ohio roads for more than 50 years, so when she talks about new roundabouts recently constructed in Ottawa County, hers is certainly a voice of experience.
Bertovich notes that the approaches to the new Ottawa County roundabouts — at an exit ramp from Ohio Route 2/53 and an adjacent one at the intersection of Route 53 and East State Road — are posted 15 mph, but some drivers speed through, which throws off the rhythm for incoming traffic. “And then sometimes people come to a complete stop when someone’s coming around or even when there’s no traffic coming,” she says. “I’ve seen four or five cars backed up coming off Route 2 where people have stopped at the roundabout when they didn’t need to.”
Larry Kelly remembers a time, from the late 1990s into the mid-2010s, when any strong wind could cause him to lose power at his home near Graysville for a couple of hours — or longer.
Kelly knew that personnel from his co-op, Marietta-based Washington Electric Cooperative, were doing everything they could to provide reliable power for him and all of his neighbors in that area of Monroe County. The problem was that many of the outages were occurring before electricity even reached the co-op’s substations.
Most college football fans in the Buckeye State hear the word “Heisman” and think immediately of the six Ohio State University players who have won the sport’s most prestigious award — most notably, perhaps, of Archie Griffin, still the only player to win the Heisman Trophy
John W. Heisman himself, the renowned innovator and Hall of Fame coach — the award’s namesake — was born in Cleveland in 1859. And though he grew up in Titusville, Pennsylvania, and played football for Brown University and the University of Pennsylvania, his first coaching jobs were at Oberlin College in 1892 (a season in which the Yeomen beat Ohio State not once but twice, by a combined score of 90–0) and Buchtel College, which is now the University of Akron.
