Ohio history

A picture of a fountain and buildings in Nelsonville

Some Nelsonville businesses worried that the new U.S. 33 bypass would take away business traffic. Now, a few years later, Nelsonville has become a destination instead of the  bottleneck it once was as drivers passed through this Athens County town. Few ever turned off the congested highway to explore Nelsonville’s picturesque downtown a few blocks away.

A pack of sled dogs carry a sled.

The relatively mild winter this year in Ohio would hardly make a person think about dog sledding. Yet Ohio does have a connection with the famed Iditarod sled dog race, held annually during March in Alaska. The Iditarod race is named for the Iditarod trail that was originally used for getting mail and supplies to the interior of Alaska and bringing out gold, which was being mined by prospectors trying to make their fortune.

Three Easter eggs sit below colorful tulips.

During one of his daily strolls about Washington, D.C., in the spring of 1878, President Rutherford B. Hayes came upon a group of unhappy children, upset that they had nowhere to roll their Easter eggs.

Rolling Easter eggs was a popular children’s game of the day, so President Hayes and First Lady Lucy decided to help the kids. They struck upon an idea for an event that’s made thousands of children happy for nearly 140 years — the White House Easter Egg Roll.

Train tracks covered in snow.

On March 29, 1916, at roughly 3:45 a.m., a speeding train plowed into two other trains that had collided in the town of Amherst in Lorain County, near Lake Erie, as part of one of the worst train wrecks in Ohio history.

To help observe the 100th anniversary of the deadly crash, Echoes in Time Theatre will present The Amherst Train Wreck at the Ohio History Center in Columbus, home of the Ohio History Connection (OHC), formerly the Ohio Historical Society.

A black and white portrait of Granville T. Woods

The Black Edison. Such was the nickname bestowed upon Granville T. Woods, an African-American inventor who held more than 50 patents. Born in Columbus in 1856, he attended school only to age 10, leaving due to family poverty and the necessity of work.