The Salty Dog Museum got started when Ron and Mark needed space to build a salt flats car to race at the Bonneville Salt Flats — it was on their bucket list. They went on to take four world records with this Model A Ford-powered sprint car.
The Salty Dog Museum, a top-notch assemblage of Model T and A Fords in Shandon, Ohio, came into being out of necessity for Ron Miller, his son B.J., and their friend Mark Radtke.
Before they opened the museum, the vehicles were spilling out of their backyards and garages.
“Everybody collects something, and we happen to collect antique vehicles and their stories,” Radtke says.
The Ford Motor Company made more than 15 million Model T’s from 1909 until 1927. Some sold for as little as $240; they were the first cars that working people could afford, B.J. Miller says. The Model A was introduced in 1928 and continued in production through 1931 — Ford made more than 4 million of them.
Many Model Ts started with a crank, and that could be a problem. Ron Miller restored cars with his dad, Herman Niehaus. “My dad didn’t like Model Ts — he broke his arm as a kid cranking one — so we had Model As,” Ron Miller says. “I had a Model A when I was 12. Me and my dad would buy ’em and tear ’em apart and save the parts.”
B.J. Miller was involved with antique autos from early on. He and his parents drove to church for his baptism in a 1921 Model T touring car. He rode in the rumble seat of a 1929 roadster, restored by his dad, for family vacations.
When B.J. Miller and his wife, Casey, got married in July 2006, the couple honeymooned in a 1931 Model A coupe that he had gotten from Niehaus, his grandfather.
“Grandpa restored it in 1960 and used all the original parts and whatever he had there,” B.J. Miller says. “He didn’t buy anything new. He did everything, paint and all. I got it when I was about 16.”
Radtke inherited his interest in antique vehicles from his parents; they had five Model As in their backyard. He bought his first Model A when he was 14 — it was mostly in a basket. The collection outgrew the yard when Radtke became interested in old fire engines. One, a 1919 Ford/Howe, he bought at a Buster Brown Shoe Store in 1982. It had been used as a display for kids to climb on, and he had to take it apart to get it out of the store.
“This is the only vehicle I rebuilt with two engines for the same vehicle,” Radtke says. “There is an engine for the pump and an engine for forward motion. When I started stripping it, I came across this name, ‘Mowrystown,’ a village in Highland County.”
Radtke learned that the Mowrystown Fire Department had bought a Howe horse-drawn motorized pumper in 1914. Then in 1924, the department bought a used 1919 Ford/Howe Model TT commercial truck chassis. The front portion of the Howe was cut off to mount the motorized pump chassis on the Ford chassis. The department used it until 1949, before the Buster Brown store got it.
The museum came to be called the Salty Dog because Radtke and Ron Miller had acquired the space to build a salt flats car — racing at the Bonneville Salt Flats was on their bucket list. The men set world records in 2007, 2009, and 2012 with the vintage Model A Ford-powered sprint car they built.
The Salty Dog is adjacent to Ron’s Machine Shop in Shandon. Ron Miller (who along with his wife, Maureen, are members of Butler Rural Electric Cooperative) and B.J. Miller are known nationally in the field for their work restoring antique engines. Ron Miller opened Ron’s Auto Body Shop 40 years ago, and B.J. and Casey Miller bought the business in 2010.
