• Notable natural areas in Champaign County are found in the following locations [27,53,55,187]:

Adams Twp.: Mosquito Creek-Cedar Farm

Concord & Mad River Twps.: Davey Woods

Harrison Twp.: County-Line Bog & Siegenthaler-Kaester Esker

Johnson Twp.: Kiser Lake State Park, Kiser Lake Wetlands, Millerstown Woods, & Possum Hollow

Rush Twp.: Brush Lake

Salem Twp.: Ohio Caverns & Urbana Wildlife Area

Urbana Twp.: Cedar Bog & Kings Creek

• Features of particular scientific interest in the County's natural areas include: limestone cave formations; abandoned pre-glacial Teays River Valley; Wisconinan glacial features including ground moraine, hummocky end moraine, esker with cross-bedding, kames, erratic boulders, kettle lakes, peat bogs, glacial lake beds, and outwash sand and gravel deposits; mesophytic (mixed hardwoods) forests; exceptional walnut stands; tallgrass prairies; relict boreal alkaline bog with white cedar and other unusual flora and fauna; cranberry bog with orchids and ferns; quaking bogs and prairie fens with rare aquatic plants; streams with abundant fish and reptiles including endangered tongue-tied chub; woodland animals including pheasant, quail, and Hungarian partridge [27,53,55,162].

• Cedar Bog nature preserve is the southernmost arborvitae (white cedar) bog in the United states. It was purchased by the State in 1942, becoming the first area acquired with State funds specifically for a nature sanctuary to assure protection of its unique natural history features. Dr. Edward S. Thomas, Curator of Natural History at the Ohio Historical Society, provided the necessary motivation and expertise to preserve Cedar Bog. The bog is home to rare animals, distinctive butterflies, more than 160 species of birds, and exotic plants such as the yellow lady's-slipper (Cypripedium cslceolus var. parviflorum) and the carnivorous sundew (Drosera rotundifolia). American mastodon (Mammut americanum) and other vertebrate remains have been unearthed in the vicinity of the bog, giving an indication of animal populations during the Pleistocene Ice Age [11,14,15,16,102].

Scientific & Technological Advancements:

• General William Hull constructed a headquarters base at Urbana and assembled his army there before starting on his ill-fated expedition to Detroit to repel the British during the War of 1812 [5].

• Warren G. Grimes, of Urbana, was an electrical engineer who designed the lights for the famous Ford tri-motor airplane (1933) and other aircraft [144].

Notable Scientists & Technologists:

• John Quincy Adams Ward (1830-1910), born in Urbana, was a prominent architectual sculptor whose works added grace to building facades. He is best known for his colossal statue of George Washington on the steps of Federal Hall in New York (1883) and several works in Central Park. He was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1905 [73,122].

• Joseph E. Wing (1861-1915), of Mechanicsburg, experimented with alfalfa and was the first to grow it successfully in Ohio. He discovered the secrets of its growth: lime-rich soil, well-drained fields, and alfalfa bacterium which earned him the nickname, "Alfalfa Joe." He wrote several books on agriculture which became standards, including: Alfalfa in America, Sheep Farming in America, and Meadows and Pastures [151].

Historic Sites of Scientific or Technological Interest:

• Gwynne-Humphreys House, Urbana – Gothic Revival house from a design by Andrew Jackson Downing [37].

Natural Scientific Features/Events:

• Notable natural areas in Clark County are found in the following locations [27,53,55,187]:

Bethel Twp.: George Rogers Clark Park

Mad River Twp.: Cold Spring Station Spring

Madison Twp.: Selma Woods

Moorefield Twp: Buck Creek State Park, Crabill Fen, & Prairie Road Fen.

Pleasant Twp.: Clark Lake Wildlife Area & Pleasant Esker-Kame Complex

Springfield Twp.: Rock Run Ravine, Snyder Park-Mad River Valley, & Gallagher/Springfield Fen

• Features of particular scientific interest in the County's natural areas include: exposures of Silurian dolomites (Niagara Group); artesian springs filtering through marl; bedrock springs (Springfield Limestone on bluffs of Mad River); glacial moraines, eskers, and kames; ravines and gorges with oak-hickory and beech-maple forests and rich herbaceous flora; tallgrass prairies; prairie fens and marl meadows; 21 rare plant species including endangered horned bladderwort; endangered spotted turtle [27,53,55,162].

• Portions of the Little Miami River Valley in Clarke, Clermont, Greene, Hamilton, and Warren Counties (169 km) have been designated as a State Scenic River by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (1969) [27].

• Conway mastodon (Mammut americanum) from the Pleistocene Ice Age discovered in a swamp near Catawba by N. S. Conway (1872). The complete skeleton of this large male (4 m high) is displayed at the Ohio Historical Center in Columbus [16,18].

Scientific & Technological Advancements:

• 4-H Club movement was born in the basement of the Springfield Courthouse when in the 1890s Albert B. Graham, a country schoolteacher, formed an "Agricultural Club" to teach boys and girls better farming techniques and home management. He was later invited by The Ohio State University to become supervisor of agricultural clubs for boys and girls throughout the State as part of the University's Land Grant mission. Graham went on to organize the clubs on a national basis, eventually adopting the name 4-H Clubs – the Hs standing for head, heart, hand, and health. The movement has spread throughout the world enriching the lives of over 12 million young people [4].

Notable Scientists & Technologists:

• James Leffel, of Springfield, was one of the State’s greatest pioneer inventors and manufacturers. He built the first foundary and machine shops in that part of the State (1838). In addition to various farm and household implements, he invented the double turbine and waterwheel [44,136].

• George Harrison Shull (1874-1954), born Clark County and educated at Antioch College, was a plant geneticist who developed a high-yield hybrid corn. He published 167 scientific papers on hydrid corn and other agricultural plants [153,186].

• Hiram Abial Pitts (1800-1860) and his twin brother John Avery Pitts (1800-1859), of Springfield, obtained a patent for an early horse-driven threshing machine (1837), known as the Buffalo-Pitts thresher. John subsequently invented an attachment that measured and registered the number of bushels threshes and bagged, and he received a gold medal for it at the at the Paris Exposition (1855) [34,71,186].

• William Whiteley, born in Springfield (1835), invented a practical agricultural reaper-binder and founded the Champion Binder Company (1852). The Champion factory became the largest producer of farm machinery in the world, turning out more than 12,000 reapers per year in the 1880s. This factory eventually became part of the McCormick Company (1902) and more recently the International Harvester Company. From the 1850s until the end of the century, southwestern Ohio led the world in the production of farm implements; as new farmlands were opened to the west, implement manufacturing in the 1900s spread in that direction [44,50,58].

• Benjamin C. Lamme (1864-1924), born on a farm near Springfield and educated at The Ohio State University, was an electrical engineer and inventor of wide reputation with 162 electrical patents. As Chief Engineer of the Westinghouse Electric Company, he was responsible for many significant improvements in electrical machinery [52,153].

• Dr. Roy J. Plunkett (1910-1994), born in New Carlisle and undertook graduate studies in chemistry at The Ohio State University (M.S., 1933; Ph.D., 1936), discovered tetrafluoroethylene resin (Teflon) while researching refrigerants at the DuPont Company (1939). Plunkett's discovery was found to be extremely heat-resistant and stick-resistant which led to its use as an important coating for everything from satellite components to cookware [23].

Historic Sites of Scientific or Technological Interest:

• Westcott House, Springfield – large Prairie-style house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright (1905) [37].

• Clark County Courthouse, Springfield – massive late Victorian architecture (1878; rebuilt from original structure after a fire in 1918) [132,133].

• Weaver Chapel-Thomas Library, Wittenburg University, Springfield – free-standing 65-m modern tower constructed with larger-than-life limestone statues of Lutheran leaders [125].

• Madonna of the Trail Monument, 5 km west of Springfield – statue of the "Pioneer Mother" to honor the women who traveled the National Highway to settle Ohio (1928; H. Leimbach, sculpturer) [40].

Natural Scientific Features/Events:

• Notable natural areas in Clermont County are found in the following locations [53-56,187]:

Franklin Twp.: Big Run & Crooked Run

Goshen Twp.: Goshen Ponds

Jackson Twp.: Blowville Swamp

Miami Twp.: Camp Simms, Cedar Cliff Prairie, Crag Wilderness, & Little Miami State Park

Stonelick Twp.: Stonelick Gorge

Tate Twp.: East Fork State Park

Union Twp.: Cincinnati Nature Center

Wayne Twp.: Stonelick State Park

• Features of particular scientific interest in the County's natural areas include: fossiliferous Ordovician limestone and calcareous shale outcrops; undisected Illinoian Till Plain; glacial outwash plains and terraces; river valleys carved by meltwaters from Wisconsinan ice sheets; natural levees and meander patterns; backwater tributaries of the Ohio River; deep, wooded ravines with beech-maple climax forests; oak-hickory swamps on Till Plain; bottomland forests of cottonwood, sycamore, and red maple; isolated prairies; bald eagles, ospreys, and herons [53,55].

• Portions of the Little Miami River Valley in Clarke, Clermont, Greene, Hamilton, and Warren Counties (169 km) have been designated as a State Scenic River by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (1969) [27].

• Boulder Monument in Goshen Twp. marks the trail over which Daniel Boone escaped from the Indians [5].

Scientific & Technological Advancements:

• Captain Anthony Meldahl Lock and Dam is located on the Ohio River near Neville [37].

Notable Scientists & Technologists:

• Francis McCormick, of Milford, organized and built the first Methodist Church in the Northwest Territory (1797) [5].

Historic Sites of Scientific or Technological Interest:

• Old Stone Meetinghouse, Batavia (1817) [5].

• President Ulysses S. Grant Birthplace, Point Pleasant – State Memorial; restored home and period furnishings [37,56].

• Chateau LaRoche, Loveland [37].

• Milford Area Historical Society and Promont Museum, Milford [37].

Natural Scientific Features/Events:

• Notable natural areas in Clinton County are found in the following locations [27,53,55,187]:

Adams & Chester Twps.: Skunk Cabbage Swamp-Dutch Creek

Chester Twp.: Caesar Creek State Park & Wildlife Area

Richland Twp.: Cherrybend Pheasant Farm

Vernon Twp.: Austin Woods, Cowan Lake State Park, Culberson Swamp Forest, Devil's Backbone, Vernon Woods, & Villars Chapel Woods

• Features of particular scientific interest in the County's natural areas include: exposures of Silurian and Ordivician strata, including fossiliferous Liberty Shale and Waynesville Shale (Richmond Formation); Illinoian glacial till and Wisconsinan glacial end moraine (Cuba); beech-maple and oak-hickory forests; white-clay swamp forests with stands of red maple, pin oak, and swamp white oak; tallgrass prairie; great blue heronry; pheasant hatchery [27,53,55,162].

Scientific & Technological Advancements:

• College Hall of Wilmington College (formerly Franklin College) was built in 1866 of bricks that were molded and fired in a kiln on campus and construction was done with the aid of the college’s students [4].

Notable Scientists & Technologists:

• Clinton County was named for General George Clinton (1739-1812), 1st Governor of New York (1777-1795), 4th Vice President of the United States (1805-1812), and originator of the Erie Canal project (New York). The Erie Canal was carried to completion by nephew, De Witt Clinton, who was also Governor of New York and groundbreaker of the Ohio canal system (1825) [2,5,73].

• Jacob Spicer Leaming (1815-1885), born in Madisonville, was a pioneer corn breeder in southwestern Ohio. At his farm in Clinton County he developed cultivation metholds that produced extraordinary yields and a breed known as "Leaming’s corn." He published the results of his experimental work in the Cincinnati Enquirer and the Commercial Gazette [151].

• Dr. Ralph Vandervort Bangham (1895-1966), born in Wilmington and educated at Wilmington College and The Ohio State University (Ph.D., 1923), was a specialist in fish parasites and taught zoology at the College of Wooster for 40 years. Bangham conducted much of his research at the Franz Theodore Stone Laboratory, Put-in-Bay (Ottawa County) [184].

Historic Sites of Scientific or Technological Interest:

• Martinsville Road Bridge over Todd Fork near Martinsville and Lynchburg Bridge over Little Miami River at Lynchburg (Highland County) – early covered bridges [37].

• Clinton County Courthouse (1919) and Clinton County Historical Society Museum, Wilmington – canceled because of a shortage of funds, the original plans for the courthouse included two large bronze lions standing on either side of the entrance that were to be the work of Eli Harvey, world-famous animal sculptor who was born in Wilmington [37,132].

Natural Scientific Features/Events:

• Notable natural areas in Columbiana County are found in the following locations [53-56,187]:

Butler Twp.: Huckleberry Swamp & Watercress Marsh

Center Twp.: Center Swamp & Guilford Lake Marsh

Elk Run, Middleton, & St. Clair Twps.: Beaver Creek State Park

Hanover Twp.: Guilford Lake State Park

Madison & St. Clair Twps.: West Fork of Little Beaver Creek.

Middleton Twp.: North Fork of Little Beaver Creek & Sheepskin Hollow

St. Clair Twp.: Beaverkettle, Bieler Run, Laurel Ridge, & Pine Run

Salem Twp.: Delphinium Slope

Washington Twp.: Highlandtown Lake Wildlife Area & Yellow Creek State Forest

West Twp.: Zepernick Lake Wildlife Area

• Features of particular scientific interest in the County's natural areas include: steep-walled gorges of Pennsylvanian Age sandstones; Permian Age rocks; coal beds; glacial end moraine and kettle lake; steep-gradient streams; Canadian zone vegetation on gorges (glacial relict) and Appalachian flora on ridges; hemlock, mountain laurel, oak-chesnut, and beech-maple forests; buttonbush swamps; waterfowl; beaver dams [53,55].

• Portions of the Little Beaver Creek Valley in Columbiana County (58 km) have been designated as a State Wild and Scenic River by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (1974) [27].

• Rich deposits of potters' clay in the bluffs of the Ohio River at East Liverpool formed the basis of a flourishing ceramics industry. John Bennett, a potter from Staffordshire, England, was the first to recognize the economic potential of the clay and built the first kiln (1840). By 1890 East Liverpool had 18 potteries that employed 2,200 workers. The Knowles, Taylor & Knowles Pottery had more than 600 employees and was one of the largest in the world [4,136].

Scientific & Technological Advancements:

• Lt. Thomas Hutchins (1730-1789), first Chief Geographer of the United States, began the initial survey of public lands near East Liverpool (1785). Known as the "The Seven Ranges" survey, this was the prototype of the American rectangular survey system which later was used throughout the West. The original survey area ran south from East Liverpool nearly to Marietta and inland to Uhrichsville. Earlier, Hutchins had made a survey of the Ohio River (1766) and published, in London, England, the first accurate report and map from this survey (1788). Federal legislation based on land-division experiments in Ohio led to the codification of the system used today [86,88,103].

• The first paper mill in Ohio and the Northwest Territory was established in the valley of Little Beaver Creek near Williansport by John Coulter of Virginia and John Bowman and John Bever of Pennsylvania (1807). Called "The Ohio Paper Mill," this firm produced handmade rag paper in a stone building until the early 1830s. The firm's watermark was a spread eagle, the word "OHIO," and the initials of the proprietors, "C B & B" [102].

• The first covered bridge in Ohio was built by John Bever at his mill on Little Beaver Creek near the Ohio-Pennsylvania border (1809) [165].

• The only canal tunnels in Ohio, known as Big and Little Tunnels, are located southeast of Lisbon. They were links in the 117-km Sandy-Beaver Canal which connected to the Ohio River and the Ohio-Erie Canal. Shifts of Irish laborers worked day and night with hand drills and blasting powder to cut the 970-m long Big Tunnel which was opened for commercial use in 1850. The canal only operated for a few years, an apparent vicim of cheaper rail transportation [102,135].

Notable Scientists & Technologists:

• Daniel Skillenger, of Wellsville on the Ohio River, was an early builder of river flatboats that were used to transport flour from area mills to New Orleans starting in 1814. In 1818 he built the hull for the steamboat Robert Thompson, one of the first steamers on the Ohio River and the first to ascend the Arkansas River to Fort Smith [94,97].

• Marcus Alonao Hanna (1837-1904), born in Lisbon and educated at Western Reserve University, formed the M. A. Hanna & Company in Cleveland (1885) from earlier partnerships which had extensive holdings in Lake Superior ore mines, southern coal fields, iron furnaces and steel mills, Great Lakes steamships, street railroads, and banks. Hanna's Blank Line fleet had 14 iron ore carriers that went on to service the National Steel Corporation into which the M. A. Hanna & Company was merged (1929). Hanna was a major political supporter of President William McKinley and served as US Senator from Ohio (1897-1904) [73,78,144,156].

• Dr. Henry Christopher McCook (1837-1911), born in Lisbon, was a minister in Steubenville and a first-rate naturalist who authored scientific and popular works on ants, spiders, and related animals, including: Mound-building Ants of the Alleghenies, Their architecture and Habits (1877) and American Spiders and Their Spinning Work (1893) [161].

• Dr. Thomas Corwin Mendenhall (1841-1924), a native of Columbiana County (Hanoverton), was the first Professor of physics and mechanics at The Ohio State University. He also served as Superintendent of the US Coast and Geodetic Survey and a glacier near Juneau, Alaska was named for him. In 1889, Mendenhall was elected to the presidency of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His definition of the electrical units ohm, volt, and ampere were adopted by the International Electrical Congress (1893) [52,138].

• Harvey S. Firestone (1868-1938), born on a farm near Columbiana, was founder of the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, Akron (1900), the first rubber plant west of the Allegheny Mountains. On the Firestone Homestead, settled by Nicholas Firestone of Maryland (1797), the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company (known as the company who "put the farm on rubber") developed a testing center where the first practical pneumatic tractor tires were tested [3,4,55,71,186].

Historic Sites of Scientific or Technological Interest:

• Church Hill Road Bridge, east of Lisbon – shortest covered bridge in Ohio and the United States (5.9 m); supported bt a single kingpost truss on each side. Tom Malone Bridge in Beaver State Park (13 km north of East Liverpool) was originally built near Lisbon (1870-1912) as a multiple kingpost truss and now stands over the mill race of Gaston Mill [69,165].

• The Museum of Ceramics, founded in East Liverpool by Andrew Carnegie, is devoted to the 19th century history of "America's Crockery City." East Liverpool was a center for ceramic manufacturing in United States for nearly a century until its decline in the 1930s. The museum is housed in the city's former Post Office which has been exquisitely adapted for exhibit purposes [4,14,46,102].

Natural Scientific Features/Events:

• Notable natural areas in Coshocton County are found in the following locations [53-56]:

Bedford Twp.: Woodbury Wildlife Area

Franklin Twp.: Muskingam River Valley & Wills Creek

Jackson Twp.: Triple Locks Park-Roscoe Basin

Linton Twp.: Wills Creek Lake

Mill Creek Twp.: Parkhill Woods

Newcastle Twp.: Mohawk Reservoir-Walhonding River & Mohican River Valley

Tiverton Twp.: Mohican Wildlife Area & Pilgrim Hills

White Eyes Twp.: North Appalachian Experimental Watershed

• Features of particular scientific interest in the County's natural areas include: Mississippian and Pennsylvanian Age rocks; sandstone cliffs; reclaimed coal strip mines (Middle Kattanning No. 6 Coal); rolling hills of unglaciated Allegheny Plateau; glacial boundary; abandoned canal lands; oak-hickory forests; black walnut stands; large tuliptrees; wooded flood plains; shorebirds and waterfowl; rocky ravines with beaver, mink, and weasel [53,55].

Scientific & Technological Advancements:

• US Department of Agriculture established the North Appalachian Experimental Watershed near Coshocton (1937). In cooperation with The Ohio State University, several State and Federal agencies, and the Toledo Scale Company, eleven large lysimeters (20 m³) have been placed around a block of undisturbed soil with a perforated pan beneath to collect and measure groundwater percolation. Different kinds of crops and grasses are grown on the surface and the hydrologic response measured over a period of time. These are the first such devices in Ohio and the first in the world to have self-recording weighing mechanisms. Experiments conducted here over the past five decades have led to a better understanding of agricultural hydrology [2].

Notable Scientists & Technologists:

• Dr. George Washington Crile (1864-1943), born in Chili, OH and educated at Ohio Northern University and Wooster College Medical School, was a distinguished surgeon and founder of the Cleveland Clinic (1921) and the American College of Surgeons. He developed surgical procedures for the respiratory system, nerve-block anesthesia, and direct-linkage blood transfusion. Crile's numerous published works include: An Experimental Research into Surgical Shock (1899), Blood-Pressure in Surgery (1903), Hemorrhage and Transfusion (1909), The Surgical Treatment of Hypertension (1938), and Intelligence, Power, and Personality (1941) [34,73].

Historic Sites of Scientific or Technological Interest:

• Roscoe Village, in Coshocton, is a restored canal town (1830s) with a recreated horse-drawn canalboat, Monticello III. The village has 20 preserved and reconstructed 19th century buildings which house several museums along the old Ohio-Erie Canal [104].

Natural Scientific Features/Events:

• Notable natural areas in Crawford County are found in the following locations [53-56,102,187]:

Bucyrus Twp.: Bartholomew Woods, Carmean Woods, Paul Sears Woods, & Tschanen Woods

Cranberry Twp.: Cranberry Marsh

Dallas Twp.: Burr Oak Grove, Daughmer Prairie Savannah, & Tallgrass Prairie

Polk Twp.: Amann Reservoir

• Features of particular scientific interest in the County's natural areas include: rolling galcial till plain end moraine; glacial lake bottomland; beech-maple climax forests (200-300 years old); mixed oak woods; State champion butternut tree; burr oak savannah; tallgrass prairies; sensitive ferns; aquatic plants [53,55,162].

Scientific & Technological Advancements:

• In the 1850s, Crestline became the rail crossroads of the nation and flourished as the main terminal for east-west and north-south lines for a century. In the 1950s, steam engines were replaced by diesel engines which required less service and the importance of Crestline as a terminal faded [94].

• Pickwick Farms, north of Bucyrus, was originally established as the Samuel Knisley Springs Farm (1819), further developed by Dr. Jerome Bland in the 1880s, and became the largest standardbred horse breeding farm in Ohio in the 1970s [102].

Notable Scientists & Technologists:

• Dr. Sherman Weaver Bilsing (1885-1954), born on a farm near Crestline and educated at Otterbein College and The Ohio State University (Ph.D., 1924), was one of the South’s most prominent economic entomologists while a Professor of entomology at Texas Agricultural and Mechanical College (1913-1952). Bilsing was an authority on insect pests such as the boll weevel, pecan nut casebearer, and the codling moth [161].

• Dr. Paul B. Sears (1891-1990), renowned ecologist and conservation educator, grew up in Bucyrus and conducted his early ecological studies in Crawford County. He was on the botany faculty at The Ohio State University (1915-1919), Oberlin College (1938-1950), and later served as Chairman of Yale’s botany department (1950-1960). He wrote 10 books dealing with the enviornment, including Deserts on the March (1935), This is Our World (1937), Life and the Environment (1939), The Living Landscape (1964), and Life Beyond the Forest (1969) [27,147].

• C. H. North, noted inventor and manufacturer from Galion, developed an improved telephone receiver and switchboard [105].

Historic Sites of Scientific or Technological Interest:

• Crawford County Courthouse (1906; Harlan Jones, architect) and Bucyrus Historic District, Bucyrus [37].

Natural Scientific Features/Events:

• Notable natural areas in Cuyahoga County are found in the following locations [53-56]:

Bedford: Tinkers Creek Gorge

Berea: Baldwin Lakes & Lake Abrams

Brecksville: Brecksville Lake

Cleaveland: Brookside Park (incl. Cleveland Zoological Park & Rain Forest), Cleveland Cultural Gardens, Cleveland Lakefront State Park, & Cleveland Metropolitan Park System encircling Greater Cleveland

Independence Twp.: Burger Nature Preserve

Mayfield: Williams Forest

Orange Twp.: Chagrin River Forest Preserve

Shaker Heights: Shaker Lakes

• Features of particular scientific interest in the County's natural areas include: Ohio Shale lake cliffs; steep-walled gorges (Devonian and Mississippian strata); type localities of the Bedford Shale, Berea sandstone, and Cleveland Shale; giant armoured fish fossils; dissected glacial till in Cuyahoga River Valley; waterfalls and rapids; flood plain alluvial deposits; Lake Erie beaches; virgin beech-maple forests; oak-hickory forests; glacial relict hemlock stands; swamps, marshes, and open-water lake [53,55].

• Portions of the Chagrin River Valley in Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake, and Portage Counties (79 km) have been designated as a State Scenic River by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (1979) [27].

Scientific & Technological Advancements:

• In the mid-1800s, an estimated 80% of the grindstones in the United States were made of sandstone quarried at Berea (Berea Formation: Mississippian Period). Berea Sandstone was also quarried on a large commercial scale for canal locks and dams starting in 1832 [46,58].

• Shaker Heights was founded by the Shakers (The United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing) in 1822 under the name North Union. The Shakers were outstanding farmers and carpenters who are credited with inventing the clothespin, flat-sided broom, and circular saw [94].

• In 1829 the citizens of Lenox in northwestern Cuyahoga County voted to change the township name to Olmsted as part of a bargain to acquire 500 books owned by the heirs of Aaron Olmsted. This is believed to be the first publicly-owned library in the Western Reserve. The books were brought from Hartford, CT by oxcart, hence the early name Oxcart Library. The remaining 125 volumes of the original library are now housed in the North Olmsted Public Library [102].

• Warner and Swasey Company was founded in Cleveland by Worcester Reed Warner (1846-1929) and Ambrose Swasey (1846-1937) in 1880 to produce advanced turret lathes, Gradalls (material movers), and other precision equipment. The founders also made outstanding contributions to the science of astronomy by building telescopes for most of the worlds’s leading observatories. They donated the Warner and Swasey Observatory to the Case Institute of Technology, including a Schmidt-type telescope [144].

• Captain Richard Thew, master of the Great Lakes steamer William P. Thew, designed and built the first steam shovel for unloading lake freighters (1880s). Holley H. Harris, stream shovel engineer from Marion, drew the formal plans and Variety Iron Works of Cleveland constructed the prototype. Thew tested his device at the ore docks of Marcus A. Hanna on the Cuyahoga River, and Hanna purchased the first shovel [43].

• Theodatus Garlick, of Cleveland, was the first to artifically breed fish (1853). He fertilized trout eggs in vitro and went on to build the nation’s first fish hatchery. The results of his experiments, published in the Ohio Farmer (1857), laid the foundation for modern fish farming [122].

• John Davison Rockefeller (1839-1937), born in Richford, N Y and raised in Cleveland, founded the Standard Oil Company in Cleveland (Chartered by the State of Ohio in 1870). This company soon became the prototype of aggressive, monopolistic business enterprise. In 1882, he formed the Standard Oil Trust, but it was dissolved in 1892 pursuant to a court decision under the Sherman Antitrust Act. Thereafter, the various Standard Oil Companies were operated separately with Rockefeller at the head until he retired in 1911 – the world's first billionaire and wealthiest man on earth without a near rival. In 1892, he founded the University of Chicago with gifts exceeding $46 million. His total benefactions are estimated at over $540 million, including establishment of the Rockefeller Foundation and various other educational and medical research funds [37,73].

• John Davison Rockefeller, Jr. (1874-1960), born in Cleveland and educated at Brown University (1897), was an executive in a number of his father's business enterprises and Director of the Rockefeller Foundation until 1940. He erected Rockefeller Center, covering several blocks in New York City; begun in 1932, this was the largest single building enterprise in the world. Rockefeller was also a noted conservationist and fostered the growth of the emerging National Park Service. He was also active in historic site preservation including colonial Williamsburg, VA [73,147].

• Henry Sherwin, born in Baltimore, VT, and Ed Williams, of Kent, formed a partnership in Cleveland in the 1870s which developed the first reliable ready-mix paint and a re-sealable container (1880). The Sherwin-Williams Company adopted the famous paint to "Cover the Earth" logo in 1905 [3,42].

• Financed by an endowment from the estate of Leonard Case, the Case School of Applied Science was founded in 1881 on Cleveland's east side. The Case School later became known as the Case Institute of Technology and in the late 1960s it merged with Western Reserve University to become Case Western Reserve University [40].

• The first iron freighter on the Great Lakes, Onoko, was launched at Cleveland (1882). This 87-m long vessel was built by the Globe Ship Building Company in their yards on the Cuyahoga River and for several years was the largest weight capacity ore carrier on the Great Lakes [20,78].

• The first left-hand steering automobiles in the country were built by Baker Electric in Cleveland (1898-1920). The first person to purchase a Baker Electric automobile was Thomas A. Edison [37].

• The first electric traffic signal in the nation was installed in Cleveland at the corner of Euclid Avenue & East 105th Street (1914). Garrett A. Morgan, a black inventor from Cleveland, developed the first automatic traffic signal with colored lights (1923) and sold it to General Electric for $40,000. In 1916 another one of Morgan’s inventions, a gas inhalalor, saved the lives of several construction workers who had been given up for lost when a tunnel explosion occurred 70 m under Lake Erie during the building of Cleveland’s water intake facility [33,105,180].

• Cleveland Municipal Airport was the first airport in the world to institute radio-controlled air traffic (1930) [37].

• Ohio Nuclear Inc., of Solon, produced the first commercial CAT scanner (1975) [122]].

• Groundbreaking ceremonies for the Great Lakes Science Center were held at Cleveland’s North Coast Harbor in November 1994. The Center is scheduled to open in July 1996 as part of Cleveland’s bicentennial celebration. The completed science museum will be the 10th largest in America, with a total exhibit area of 50,300 m², more than 300 interactive exhibits on Great Lakes environment and technology, and a 9-story, glass-enclosed atrium (Gund Wintergarden) for viewing Lake Erie [95].

Notable Scientists & Technologists:

• Dr. Jared Potter Kirtland (1793-1877), born in Connecticut and educated in medicine, geology, and mineralogy at Yale University, came to Cleveland in 1823 where he pioneered several branches of science. He was a founder of the Cleveland Medical College (now part Case Western Reserve University) and did much to advance medical education throughout the Western Reserve. His breadth of interest is shown by his contributions to medical, scientific’ and agricultural periodicals in such diverse fields as medicine, botany, zoology, and scientific agriculture. Dr. Kirtland also served as a geologist and zoologist for the first Geological Survey of Ohio (1837-1838) [48,52].

• Colonel Charles Whittlesey (1808-1886), born in Connecticut and a graduate of the US Military Academy at West Point (1831), was a resident of Cleveland and served as a prominent geologist and topographer for the first Geological Survey of Ohio (1837-1838). He published more than 50 reports on the geology of the State, including early studies of Lake Erie water levels, shoreline erosion rates, and mineral resources. Whittlesey also served as a geologist for the US Geological Survey; exploring the mineral resources of the Lake Superior region, and later working there as a mining engineer. He became an authority on western history and archaeology, discovering more than 60 earthworks in Ohio and mapping half of them. He is credited with doing much to develop mining engineering in Ohio. His life work includes some 200 scientific papers [48,52,152,153].

• Dr. J. Lang Castle, Head of the Western Reserve Medical School and owner of a private chemical/microscopic laboratory, was hired by the Cleveland-based Dead River and Ohio Mining Company to explore the Lake Superior iron country for exploitable deposits (1845). On the south shore of Lake Superior at the Carp River he found a red ore hill 300 m high and 1.6 km long. He named it Cleveland Mountain, secured a mining permit, and returned to Cleveland with an estimate that the deposit contained enough iron to make a railroad all the way to the Pacific coast [20]. The hill eventually became the property of the Cleveland Iron Mining Company (founded in 1852 by Samuel L. Mather) and in 1855 Tower Jackson, the first mining agent, was able to ship 1,449 tons of ore to Cleveland for processing. The first consignment was carried by the two-masted brig Columbia, the first vessel to pass through the Sault Canal between Lake Superior and Lake Huron, a cargo of 120 tons of iron ore destined for Cleveland (18 June 1855) [20,77].

• Charles F. Brush (1840-1929), born in Euclid, invented the electric arc lamp and dynamo which brought electric lights to the streets of American cities. In 1875 he produced a dynamo machine that provided the proper amount and kind of electric current to power several lamps simultaneously and electric arc lamps that would burn uniformly. In 1881 he directed the construction of a central power station in Cleveland and the installation of street lamps throughout the city, making Cleveland the first city in the world to be lighted electrically. His Brush Electric Light Company later was merged with a Thomas A. Edison enterprise to form the General Electric Company [3, 94].

• Albert Abraham Michaelson (1852-1931), born in Strelno, Prussia and graduated from the US Naval Academy at Annapolis (1873), was Professor of physics at the Case School of Applied Science, Cleveland (1883-1889) and the first American to win the Noble Prize in physics (1907). He built an interferometer (a device designed to split a beam of light in two and bring the two part back together again) and collaborated with chemist Edward William Morley (1838-1923) of Western Reserve University (1869-1906) to conduct experiments that showed the speed of light is unaffected by movements of the earth through space (1887), disproving the "space ether concept" and paving the way for Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity (1905). The pioneering work performed by this pair has come to be known as the Michelson-Morley experiments. Michelson was also the first scientist to accurately determine the speed of light (1881), a value that was to stand until the 1930s when he revised it (299,774 km/sec) and that value stood until the 1970s when it was lower by only 2 km/sec. He served as President of the National Academy of Sciences from 1923 to 1927. Morley's later research dealt with the density and weight of gases, which resulted in his definitive chemical method of determining atomic weights (1895) [34].

• William Gwinn Mather (1857-1951), born in Cleveland and educated at Trinity College in Hartford, CT (B.S., 1877; M.A., 1880), joined the Cleveland Iron Mining Company in 1878, and when this company joined with the Iron Cliffs Company to form the Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Company (1891) he became the new firm's first President and Chairman of the Board in 1933. He is the namesake of the 188-m bulk freighter William G. Mather which served as the fleet flagship of the Cleveland-Cliffs Steamship Company from 1925 until 1952. This vessel continued to serve for three more decades until shre was restored in the late 1980s by the Great Lakes Historical Society and is now docked in downtown Cleveland where she serves as a maritime museum. The boiler room of the William G. Mather has been designated as a National Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark. This vessel was the first United States steamship to operate without firemen because of the installation of Ervin G. Bailey’s boiler meter [77,106].

• Jeptha Homer Wade (1857-1926), born in Cleveland, organized and promoted the Western Union Telegraph Company [153].

• Frank Hurlbut Chittenden (1858-1929), born in Cleveland and educated at Cornell University, was an economic entomologist whose research formed the basis for controlling stored-products pests. He was Editor of Entomologica Americana and a researcher with the Bureau of Entomology, US Department of Agriculture (1891) [161].

• Alexander Winton (1860-1932), born in Scotland, came to Cleveland in 1890 where he manufactured bicycles and experimented with the first gasoline powered bicycle. In 1898, he founded the Winton Motor Carriage Company, the first American company to sell a regularly produced automobile and the first to produce a truck. He is also credited with placing the first automobile advertisement (Scientific American, 30 July 1898) [34,37].

• Dr. George W. Crile (1864-1943) of the Cleveland Clinic and Professor Dayton C. Miller (1866-1941) of Case School of Applied Science (Physics) conducted early X-ray experiments to observe fractured bones (1896) using the newly discovered X-rays of Professor Wilhelm Konrad Roentgen, Giessen Institute, Germany. Miller perfected the technique for exposing skeletal images on photographic plates [43]. The Cleveland Clinic continued experimentation and by 1926, X-rays were being used in the treatment of cancer, but determining dosage was a problem. In 1928, Jack Victoreen, a physicist from Cleveland, built a machine for the Clinic that would accurately measure X-ray radiation. During World War II, Victoreen worked on the Manhattan Project making improvements to the Geiger-Mueller tube and developing a practical, hand-held, radiation detecting apparatus, the Geiger Counter. By 1948, Victoreen's radiation counting devices had found uses in the experimental treatment of cancer patients with radioactive cobalt at The Ohio State University Hospital [42].

• In addition to his early work with surgical X-rays, Dr. Dayton C. Miller (1866-1941), born in Strongsville, designed a device called the phonodeik to photographically record the sound waves of musical instruments, measure the speed of light in a magnetic field, and determine the efficiency of incandescent light. He served as a member of the National Research Council in Washington, DC from 1927 to 1930 [94].

• Dr. William Meriam Burton (1865-1954), born in Cleveland and a graduate of Western Reserve University (B.A., chemistry, 1886), developed the craking process for refining crude oil to produce gasoline. His process doubled the potential yield of gasoline from crude oil and in the first 15 years of its application more than one billion barrels of oil were saved. Burton started his research at Standard Oil Company in Cleveland as a chemist and eventually rose to President of Standard Oil of Indiana (1918) [23].

• John Thomas (Jack) Miner (1863-1944), noted conservationist and naturalist, was born in Westlake and moved to Ontario, Canada in 1878. He achieved worldwide recognition for his pioneering studies of waterfowl migration. This work led to the establishment of a bird sanctuary at Kingsville, Ontario (1904), the publication of books on waterfowl, and the creation of the Jack Miner Migratory Bird Foundation [102,152].

• Matthew Luckiesh, born in Iowa (1889) and raised in Cleveland, was a physicist and research director at General Electric Company’s Nela Park Laboratories working on light and vision. He developed several theories on color and its physiological effect on people. During World War I he studied camouflage, and later invented artificial sunlight and germicidal lamps. He wrote numerous books and articles on light and other aspects of physics, including Color and Colors (1938) [71,152,153].

• Dr. Charles Arthur Dambach (1911-1969), born in Cleveland, conceptualized and was first director of The Ohio State University’s School of Natural Resources (1955-1969) [147].

• Dr. Willem J. Kolff, born in The Netherlands (1911), was a Medical Researcher and Scientific Director of the Artificial Organs Program at the Cleveland Clinic (1950-1967). He invented the artificial kidney dialysis machine and the soft shell artificial heart. An estimated 55,000 people in the United States are being kept alive by his inventions. Dr. Kolff was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1985 [23].

• Dr. Frederick Chapman Robbins, born in Auburn, AL (1916) and educated at Harvard University Medical School (M.D., 1940), was co-awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine and physiology for his contributions to developing techniques for cultivating poliomyelitis virus (1954), paving the way for polio vaccines such as the one developed by Dr. Albert Sabin at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine (1960). Dr. Robbins was Director of the Department of Pediatrics and Contagious Diseases at Cleveland Metropolitan General Hospital (1952-1966) and was Professor of pediatrics at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine ((1952-1980). In 1980, he became President of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences [34].

• Dr. Raymond S. Baby (1917-1982), born in Cleveland and educated at Western Reserve University, was Curator of archaeology for the Ohio Historical Society (1948-1979). Baby’s research interests included prehistoric culture in Ohio and prehistoric house structures and settlement patterns [13,184].

• Dr. John S. Millis, President of Western Reserve University, compared science and technology and their relative impact on history by saying in 1952 that, "the impact of science upon history is slight in any direct sense, and that the impact of scientists upon the course of events almost negligible, but that the impact of the technologist who applies the knowledge of the scientist is direct and overpowering. History is made, not by scientific fact, nor by technical skill. History is made by men in whose minds knowledge becomes useful, and by whose skill the face of the earth is made to change." [181].

• Robert N. Manry, a Cleveland newspaper copyreader, completed a 78-day solo voyage from Falmouth, MA to Falmouth, England in a 4-m sailboat, the smallest known craft to cross the Atlantic Ocean (August 1965) [52].

Historic Sites of Scientific or Technological Interest:

• Shaker Historical Museum, Shaker Heights – contains artifacts and inventions from early Shaker settlement in Ohio [14].

• The Arcade, built in downtown Cleveland (1890), was designed by John M. Eisenmann and George H. Smith as a mercantile center. The five-story galleries connect the ten-story towers facing the city's two main thoroughfares. The daring architectural design is Romanesque, a popular Victorian style from 1875 to 1900 [102,143].

• Park Synagogue, Cleveland Heights – domed synagogue designed by Eric Mendelsohn (1950) [37,125].

• Garfield Monument (1881) and Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument (1896), Cleveland [125,143].

• Union Terminal Group, Public Square, Cleveland – architectural symbol of Cleveland; integrated train station, office tower, shopping mall, and hotel [37,143].

• Wade Park District, East Boulevard, Cleveland – park designed by Olmsted Brothers; surrounding buildings of architectural significance include Cleveland Museum of Art (Greek Revival), Severance Hall (home of the Cleveland Orchestra), and the Temple (Byzantine-style Jewish temple with tiled dome) [37,125].

• Cleveland Museum of Natural History, Cleveland – largest natural science museum in Ohio with fine exhibits of vertebrate paleontology, ecology, and anthropology[105,125].

• Cleveland Public Library, Cleveland – Neo-Classic building which houses the nation’s second largest public library; mural by William Sommer recreates early 19th-century Cleveland [125,143].

•Western Reserve Historical Society Museum and Library, Cleveland – includes the Frederick C. Crawford Auto-Aviation Museum with more than 160 automobiles, airplanes, horse-drawn carriages, and fire engines [125].

• Ford automotive plant at Brookpark has been recognized as the first automated factory in the United States [114].

• Lewis Research Center of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, at Hopkins International Airport, has an exhibit hall that features the research accomplishments of the Center [105].

Natural Scientific Features/Events:

• Notable natural areas in Darke County are found in the following locations [53-56,187]:

Adams Twp.: Darke Wildlife Area

Brown Twp.: Drew Woods

Harrison Twp: Harrison Woods, Marl Bog, & Sunbeam Prairie.

Liberty Twp.: Rhoads Lakes

Neave Twp.: Wayne Lakes

Patterson Twp.: Willowdell Cemetery Woods

• Features of particular scientific interest in the County's natural areas include: recessional moraines, erratics, boulder deposits, kames, and eskers; marl deposits; virgin oak forests; beech woodland; tallgrass prairies; rare herbacious plants and insects; peat bog and lakes with marshy borders; rare salamander; waterfowl [53,55,162].

• Portions of the Stillwater-Greenville Valley in Darke, Miami, and Montgomery Counties (150 km) have been designated as a State Scenic and Recreational River by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (1975) [27].

Scientific & Technological Advancements:

• John W. Lambert, of Ansonia, invented a mechanical corn picker (1876) [33].

Notable Scientists & Technologists:

• Lowell Thomas (1892-1981), born in Woodington, was a preeminent radio news commentator, explorer, lecturer, and author. Among the more than 50 true-life adventure books he wrote are: With Lawrence in Arabia (1924), Kabluk of the Eskimo (1932), Back to Mandalay (1951), and Seven Wonders of the World (1956). The Seven Wonders book was written in conjuction with Stanley Warner’s Cinerama production by the same name. Thomas traveled over 240,000 km to undertake this project and his cameramen exposed nearly 250 km of film to make this around-the-world odyssey [33,34, 35].

• Lt.-Commander Zachary Lansdowne, of Greenville, was captain of the US Navy's 207-m airship ZR-1, Shenandoah, and an expert on air masses and wind currents. The Shenandoah was America's first helium-filled, lighter-than-air rigid airship (1923) and the first to fly the perimeter of the United States. The nonflammable, helium gas was contained in 20 bags of goldbeater's skinned fabric made from the intestines of 750,000 oxen. Lansdowne was one of 14 men who died when the airship's control car plummeted to earth during a violent thunderstorm near Cambridge, OH on 3 September 1925 [4,33,40,43].

Historic Sites of Scientific or Technological Interest:

• Darke County Historical Society and Garst Museum, Greenville – museum contains exhibits on two local notables: broadcaster Lowell Thomas and sharpshooter Annie Oakley [37,125].

Natural Scientific Features/Events:

• Notable natural areas in Defiance County are found in the following locations [53-56]:

Defiance Twp.: Auglaize Woods, Auglaize River Power Dam, & Five Mile Creek

Highland Twp.: Ayerville Bog

Milford Twp.: Krill Lake

Richland Twp.: Independence Dam State Park, Maumee River Valley, & The Tree Farm

Tiffin Twp.: Oxbow Lake Wildlife Area

• Features of particular scientific interest in the County's natural areas include: exposed dolomite bedrock; striated glacial boulders; glaciated Till Plain; lake depression in Fort Wayne glacial end moraine; glacial Lake Maumee features; beech-maple and oak-hickory forests; Black Swamp forest; tallgrass prairies; wetlands rich flora and Odonata fauna (damselflies and dragonflies); bogs [53,55,162].

• Portions of the Maumee River Valley in Defiance, Henry, Lucas, Paulding, and Wood Counties (155 km) have been designated as a State Scenic and Recreational River by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (1974) [27].

Scientific & Technological Advancements:

• Independence Dam, on the Maumee River at Independence, was built in the 1840s to control water levels of the Miami-Erie Canal and Indiana’s Wabash Canal which met in Defiance [4].

Notable Scientists & Technologists:

• Thomas G. Thompson, raised in Defiance and educated at The Ohio State University (B.S., mechicanical engineering; 1975), was a Research Scientist at Battelle Memorial Institute, Columbus (1980-1987) where he developed deep-sea exploration techniques. Forming his own company, Columbus-America Discovery Group, he led a team of scientists and engineers to discover, scientifically explore, and recover the Gold-Rush Period steamer SS Central America at a depth of 2,200 m and 270 km off the Carolina coast (1986-1991). The project included design and construction of the 6-ton remotely operated research submersible Nemo. This vehicle provided the research team with the first ever sustained working presence in the deep sea (up to 80 hours per dive). During the exploration phase of the project Dr. Charles E. Herdendorf, professor of oceanography at The Ohio State University, served as Science Coordinator and Director of the Adjunct Science Program. Robert D. Evans, geologist, served as Director of Science and History throughout the project. The project documented at least 10 new invertebrate species, ranging from sponges to an octopus, living at abyssal depths in the North Atlantic Ocean [30].

Historic Sites of Scientific or Technological Interest:

• Auglaize Village (19th century blacksmith shop and railroad station) and Fort Defiance site (built by General Anthony Wayne in 1794), Defiance [37,56].

Natural Scientific Features/Events:

• Notable natural areas in Delaware County are found in the following locations [53-56,187]:

Berlin Twp.: Alum Creek State Park

Concord Twp.: Welch Woods

Concord & Liberty Twps.: O’Shaughnessy Reservoir

Delaware: Blue Limestone Park & Kissner Quarry Ponds

Delaware Twp.: Camp Lazarus, Greenwood Lake, & Stratford Woods

Genoa Twp.: Hoover Reservoir

Kingston Twp.: Bohannan’s Clarinch

Liberty Twp.: Olentangy Indian Caves, Seymour Woods, & Wildcat Creek

Marlboro & Troy Twps.: Delaware State Park & Delaware Wildlife Area

Orange Twp.: Highbanks State Nature Preserve

Troy Twp.: Weiser Woods

• Features of particular scientific interest in the County's natural areas include: Ohio Shale, Olentangy Shale, Delaware Limestone, and Columbus Limestone (fossiliferous) outcrops in deep ravines; limestone caves; bedrock faults; rolling glacial Tll Plain and meltwater eroded valleys; oak-hickory and beech-maple forests; Ohio buckeyes; marshes; pond with freshwater jellyfish; waterfowl [53,55].

• Portions of the Olentangy River in Delaware and Franklin Counties (33 km) have been designated as a State Scenic River by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (1973) [27].

• Ohio’s largest crystalline erratic, Sunbury Erratic, is located east of Sunbury. This massive oval-shaped granite boulder (6.7 m x 5.5 m x 2.4 m; 200 tons) was transported from the Canadian Shield to central Ohio by a Pleistocene glacier [36].

• First birth of a gorilla in captivity took place in the Columbus Zoo (1956). This zoo, located near Powell, now houses four generations of gorillas [105].

Scientific & Technological Advancements:

• "Big Ear" at Perkins Observatory, Delaware, is one of the nation’s largest radio telescopes with research dedicated to scanning the universe for extraterrestrial radio transmissions. Perkins Observatory is jointly operated by The Ohio State University and Ohio Wesleyan University. In the 1930s, Perkins Observatory had the third largest reflecting telescope lens in the world [37,40].

Notable Scientists & Technologists:

• President Rutherford B. Hayes (1822-1893), born in Delaware and later a resident of Fremont, was the first president to have a telephone installed in the White House (1878). Fittingly, President Hayes' first call was to its inventor, Alexander Graham Bell [37].

• Dr. F. Sherwood Rowland, native of Delaware and educated at Ohio Wesleyan University (1948) and the University of Chicago, was the 1995 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry for his work on the Earth’s atmospheric chemisty and th effects of atmospheric pollutants. Rowland published over 330 scientific papers on the results of his research [170].

Historic Sites of Scientific or Technological Interest:

• Ohio Wesleyan University and Perkins Observatory, Delaware – features an 80 cm reflecting telescope [37,56].

Natural Scientific Features/Events:

• Notable natural areas in Erie County are found in the following locations [27,53-56,185,187]:

Berlin Twp.: Berlin Heights Ravine, Edison Woods, and Old Woman Creek Estuary

Florence Twp.: Vermilion River Valley

Florence & Vermilion Twps.: Chappel Creek Ravine

Huron Twp.: DuPont Marsh, Lotus Bed-Mud Brook, & Sheldon Marsh

Kelleys Island: Glacial Grooves, Kelleys Island Forest & Quarries, & North Pond

Margaretta Twp.: Back-to-the-Wild, Castalia Blue Holes and Springs, Castalia Trout Farms-Cold Creek, Crystal Rock Cave and Sink Hole, Moxley Marsh-Sandusky Bay, Resthaven Wildlife Area, and Willow Point Wildlife Area

Milan: Galpin Wildlife Preserve

Milan Twp.: Milan Wildlife Area

Oxford Twp.: Erie Sand Barrens

Oxford & Perkins Twps.: NASA-Plum Brook Station

Sandusky: Cedar Point Sand Spit

• Features of particular scientific interest in the County's natural areas include: glacial groves and quarries in Columbis Limestone (Devonian Period); limestone caves and sinks; deep ravines in Ohio Shale and Bedford Shale; channel-filled, slumped, and overturned Berea Sandstone (Mississippian Period) with ripple marks and cross-bedding; post-glacial abandoned beach ridges and lake plain; Lake Erie sand spits, dunes, and barrier beaches; Lake Erie estuaries and coastal marshes; artesian springs; oak-maple-basswood forests; red cedar and hackberry; hemlock in ravines; tallgrass prairies; wet-marl prairie; wetlands with emergent-submergent plants; American lotus beds; abandoned sandstone quarry with freshwater jellyfish; fish spawning habitat on Lake Erie reefs and in coastal marshes; shorebirds and waterfowl; bald eagle nests [27,53,55,162,185].

• Blue Hole in Castalia is a large artesian spring and sink hole in Devonian limestones approximately 15 m deep with a flow rate of 28,500 liters/minute, equivalent to the water needs of a city with a population of 75,000. The Blue Hole and other large springs in Castalia's Big Cold Creek Park are fed by underground streams that originate near Bellevue (Huron and Sandusky Counties). The water that issues from the springs is devoid of dissolved oxygen and ranges from 8° to 11° C throughout the year, thus the receiving stream, Cold Creek, in its short reach to Sandusky Bay never freezes. Once aerated, the waters of Cold Creek provide an excellent habitat for trout farms located downstream of the springs. John Hoyt founded the first hatchery for brook trout on this stream in 1870 [33,74,94].

• Glacial Grooves in the Columbus Limestone (Devonian Period) on Kelleys Island are considered one of the world's most spectacular and accessible examples of ice scour by a continental glacier. These grooves were cut by granitic rocks embedded in the base of Pleistocene glaciers more than 30,000 years ago. A trough 120 m long, 11 m wide, and 3 m deep remains today at the edge of a limestone quarry. The limestone containing the grooves shows evidence of marine fossils which lived in a shallow tropical sea some 400 million years ago [6,14,19, 102].

• Old Woman Creek National Estuarine Research Reserve and State Nature Preserve was established in 1980 and dedicated to research and education focusing on problems of coastal wetlands and their watersheds. This 240-hectare Research Reserve has been the site of extensive work on the physical, biological, and chemical processes acting in a freshwater estuary and coastal wetland, the amount of which is unmatched in the Great Lakes region [27].

• Ceylon Junction, 6 km east of Huron, is the most southerly point of Lake Erie and the entire Great Lakes-St. Lawrence waterway system (Latitude: 41°22'50" North) [38].

• Heaviest measured Ohio storm rainfall in an 8-hr period, 24.2 cm, fell on Sandusky (12 July 1966) [33].

Scientific & Technological Advancements:

• Immigrating from Canada, John Hoak and John Fleming brought fruit trees with them and established one of the first orchards in the Western Reserve Firelands (1812) [105].

• Huron was the leading builder of American steamships on the Great Lakes in the 1830s. The first steamer built in Huron was the Sheldon Thompson (1830), followed by the White Pigeon (1832), George Washington (1833), Delaware (1834), Columbus (1835), United States (1835), DeWitt Clinton (1836), Cleveland (1837), Great Western (1838), and General Scott (1839). These 10 vessels had a combined tonnage 3,880. Only 25 steam vessels had been built on the Great Lakes before the Sheldon Thompson, which was the second steamer built on the Ohio shore of the lake (Enterprise, the first in Ohio, was built in Cleveland in 1826) and only the ninth on Lake Erie. The Great Western, at 780 tons, was the largest Great Lakes steamship built until 1845; of the more than 1,200 steamers built on the Great Lakes in the first 50 years of steam navigation, only 80 were larger [101].

• The first railroad in Ohio was dedicated at Sandusky by William Henry Harrison on 7 September 1835. The railroad was built under a special charter granted by the State's General Assembly to the Mad River and Lake Erie Railroad for a line from Dayton to Sandusky. The first locomotive on the line was named The Sandusky. By 1840, some 50 km of track was opened trough Bellevue and six years later a connection was made with the Little Miami Railroad to Cincinnati. By the time of the Civil War, Ohio led the nation in the length of railroad track. The coming of the railroad initiated the long decline of the canals which were virtually extinct by the end of the century [94].

• Blackboard chalk was developed by the American Crayon Company of Sandusky (1835) [37].

• Milan was a leading Great Lakes port after the completion of the 5-km Milan Canal in 1839. The center of activity was the Milan Basin where grain and other produce were brought from area farms for shipment to Lake Erie and world ports through 14 warehouses. As many as 20 schooners and steamers would daily take on cargo at the Basin and 75 vessels were built there during its 30-year heyday. Railroad competetion and the flood of 1868 ended Milan's port activity [102].

• Good Samaritan Hospital was founded in Sandusky (1876) for the purpose of maintaining and operating an institution for the sick and injured that was universal in its activities and benfactions and was not under the control of any religious body or civic organization. Rev. William W. Farr and Mr. C. C. Keech were the principal founders of the hospital [102].

• The Hoover potato digger was invented in Avery and was manufactured in the building presently occupied by the Schlessman Seed Company [129].

• First flying boat was constructed in Sandusky and first flown from Cedar Point to Cleveland. The craft was powered with a Rogers Engine which was also made in Sandusky [129].

• Sandusky firm of A. Feick and Brothers built the Wyoming State Capital in Cheyenne (1887-1888). The grand Neo-Corinthian building was designed by Toledo architect David W. Gibbs and largely fabricated in Ohio and shipped by rail to Wyoming [122].

• Ohio State University established the first biological research station on the Great Lakes at the State fish hatchery in Sandusky (1895); later moved to Cedar Point and known as the Lake Laboratory (1898); finally moved to Put-in-Bay (1918) and renamed the Franz Theodore Stone Laboratory (1929) with permanent facilities on Gibraltar and South Bass Islands [25].

• Plum Brook Research Station (3,200-hectare site) of NASA’s Lewis Research Center in Perkins and Oxford Twp., initiated work in the mid-1970s on wind energy as an alternative source of power [134].

Notable Scientists & Technologists:

• Colonel William D'Alto Mann (1839-1920), born in Sandusky, graduate of Oberlin College, and Civil War hero, invented and patented the compartment boudoir car (1871). He introduced it in Europe, and founded the company which operated and controlled the railroad sleeping car business in Europe (Compagnie Internationale des Wagon-Lits). American rights to his enterprise were purchased by the Pullman Company (1883) [26].

• Thomas A. Edison (1847-1931), born at Milan, ranks as one of the world's most renowned experimental physicists and inventors. Edison's more than 1,000 patented inventions, such as the incandescent electric lamp, phonograph, and motion-picture projector, have given employment to millions of people. Although not by temperment a pure scientist, in 1882 Edison made a significant scientific discovery – in a near-vacuum an electric current could be made to flow between two wires that did not touch one another. The discovery of this phenomenon (known as the Edison effect) led to the development of the vacuum tube and eventually to the foundation of the electronics industry [5,7,23,166].

• Edwin Lincoln Moseley (1865-1948), teacher of science at Sandusky High School (1889-1914, rose to the rank of professor at Bowling Green State University (1914-1948). At the high school he established a museum which had over 17,000 biological and mineral specimens. He wrote several books on nature and science, was President of the Ohio Academy of Science (1902), and published many articles in scientific journals on the physical environment and ecology of north central Ohio [26].

• William Hulse Millspaugh (1869-1959), founder of the Sandusky Foundry & Machine Company (1900), invented the centrifugally-cast suction rolls used in the manufacture of paper and paperboard. This invention made possible high speed machines (25 m/sec) which could handle paper widths as great as 8 m. Millspaugh also collaborated with shipbuilders to develop propeller sleeves and other mechanisms for ship propulsion. For his contributions to the art of papermaking, Millspaugh was awarded the second Edward Longstreth medal of the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia and gold medal by the Technical Association of the Pulp & Paper Association [26].

• Dr. Paul Smith Welsh (1882-1959), born in Illinois and educated at the University of Michigan (1913; zoology), was a member of the faculty of The Ohio State University’s Lake Laboratory at Cedar Point (1917). He later served as Director of the Michigan Biological Station (1924-1925) and published his classic works, Limnology (1935; rev. 1952) and Limnological Methods (1948) [147].

• Dr. Norbert Adolph Lange (1892-1990), born in Sandusky and educated at the University of Michigan (Ph.D., 1918), was a renowned chemist, professional engineer, and author of Handbook of Chemistry (1934, 1st Edition). He was on the chemistry faculty of Case Institute of Technology, Cleveland (1919-1934) and Western Reserve Uviversity, Cleveland (1925-1952). Lange’s interest in science took root when he was a Sandusky High School student in the biology, chemistry, and physics classes of Professor Edwin Lincoln Moseley (1907-1910). Before attending college, Lange served as a time keeper on an excavation project in Sandusky and was on hand to save a 5-m diameter concretion that was unearthed (1911). With Professor Moseley’s help, the concretion was placed in the town square where it remains [26].

Historic Sites of Scientific or Technological Interest:

• Inscription Rock on the south shore of Kelleys Island contains intricate pictographs cut into a flat-topped slab of limestone by prehistoric Indians (1200-1600 AD). Etchings include birds, mammals, and humans wearing headdresses. Discovered in 1833, the rock is 10 m long, 6 m wide, and 2 m thick. An 1851 Indian translation of the inscription's meaning suggests the pictographs refer to tribal peace treaties and turmoils accompanying the occupation of northen Ohio by late prehistoric or early historic Indians. Located nearby, Kelleys Mansion was built by Adison Kelley, son of the island’s founder, in the late 1800s [14,56,102,141,163].

• The birthplace of Thomas Alva Edison (1847), the inventor of the incandescent light and holder of some 1,092 other patents, is a small red brick house located on a hill overlooking the canal basin in Milan [94,117,125,166].

• The Cholera Cemetery in Sandusky commemorates the 400 victims of the 1849-1852 epidemic that hit the city of 5,700 inhabitants and the heroic doctors, nurses, and citizens who cared for the afflicted, led by Dr. Cochran and Foster M. Follett. During the epidemic 3,500 residents fled the city in fear. At the other end of the State in Cincinnati, 8,500 people died from cholera in 1849 – about one of every 14 residents. The fatality rate of the disease ranged from 30 to 80%, with death sometimes occurring within hours. Although the disease exacted a terrible toll in human life, it led to improved sanitary conditions in the State's cities that have made cholera virtually unheard of today [94,102].

• Mitchell Turner House, Milan – Greek Revival brick house with handsome portico and hand carved decoration [37].

• Milan Historical Museum, Milan – I840s brick house which houses artifacts of canal-period enterprises [125].

• Inland Seas Maritime Museum, Vermilion – operated by the Great Lakes Historical Society, the former Wakefield Mansion houses ship models, paintings, engines, and other artifacts of early Great Lakes navigation, and the Great Lakes Library [125].

• Cedar Point, Sandusky – world’s largest amusement park (ride capacity); features 11 roller coasters including some of the tallest and fastest in the country [104].

Natural Scientific Features/Events:

• Notable natural areas in Fairfield County are found in the following locations [53-56,187]:

Berne Twp.: Crystal Springs, Geneva Hills, Kettle Hill, Rhododendron Cove, & Wahkeena Nature Preserve

Bloom Twp.: Chestnut Ridge

Greenfield Twp.: Greenfield Dam & Rock Mills Dam Wildlife Areas

Hocking Twp.: Beck’s Knob/Clear Creek Valley, Christmas Rocks, Jacobs Ladder, & Shallenberger/Allens Knob

Lancaster: Rising Park-Mount Pleasant

Madison Twp.: Snortin Ridge-Barnebey Center

Richland Twp.: Rusk Creek Lake

Violet Twp.: Pickerington Ponds & Tucker Woods

Walnut Twp.: Buckeye Lake State Park

• Features of particular scientific interest in the County's natural areas include: cliffs of Black Hand Sandstone; boundaries of Illinoian and Wisconsinan ice sheets; mixed mesophytic forests (70 species of trees); chesnut, oak, and mountain laurel on sandstone knob outcrops; narrow valleys with hemlock, beech, tuliptrees, and rhododendron; polypody fern; tallgrass prairies; wood frogs in seasonal ponds [27,53,55,102,162].

• Wahkeena Nature Preserve contains 26 varieties of ferns [105].

Scientific & Technological Advancements:

• Ohio's first State Park was established at Buckeye Lake (1894). The park area was a post-glacial marsh until 1825 when it was inundated to form the Licking Summit Reservoir and used to regulate water levels in the Ohio-Erie Canal from Newark to Portsmouth. Today, visitation to Ohio's State Parks is among the highest in the nation at more than 61 millon persons per year [11,12,33,37].

• Anchor Hocking Glass Corporation of Lancaster, the world’s largest manufacturer of glass tableware, was founded by I. J. Collins (1905) [144].

Notable Scientists & Technologists:

• Colonel Ebenezer Zane (1747-1811), builder of the first roadway connecting the eastern states with the interior of Ohio, Zane's Trace (1796), was granted 1.6-km² parcel of land on the Hocking River by the US Government in payment for his work.