The Rock Mill dam park located in Lancaster Ohio has been restored and the mill wheel has been replaced, it is now the largest working water mill wheel in north America.
The first gristmill at this site was built in 1799 by Joseph Loveland and Hezekiah Smith. They also built a store, a distillery, and the Blue Ball Tavern. The available alcohol created disturbances with the Wyandot and Shawnee Indians as well as the settlers. Soon the local community forced Loveland and Smith to leave.
One of my favorite pastimes as a teens was to to go fishing at Ohio Power Lakes. Aep.s recreatiom land were there are over 700 man maid lakes and many nature made, That in it self was a blast but the best feature for me was to watch big muskie ripping away at the land, Built in 1969, owned by Central Ohio Coal Co. Last used in 1991. Cost $25 million to build. A model 4250-W Bucyrus Erie drag line: only one ever built. She moved in her life time over 608,000,000 cubic yards of overburden ( twice that amount during the construction of the Panama Canal) Pictures and video are cool but words can hardly explain the shear aw struck feeling that would overwhelm you when this beast was seen in action, It maid you feel very small and insignificant, Sadly like many other great man maid wonders this toy was dismantled and sold for scrap, The bucket was saved and is now on display at at Miners Memorial Park along rt 78 10 miles east of McConnelsville Ohio, READ MORE>
Presidents in the WoodsHIGH ON A RIDGE IN A REMOTE, HEAVILY WOODED AREA OF SOUTHEASTERN Ohio, a towering stone figure of Warren G. Harding guards a rarely traveled gravel road. Barely visible through the undergrowth a hundred feet farther down the road are strange figures carved into sandstone outcroppings: an eagle in flight, an elephants head, Abraham Lincoln, an Indian chief. A crouching lion and a wildcat cast wary eyes at passersby. William McKinley stands presidential on a pedestal in the front yard of an abandoned house from which some of the siding has fallen, revealing the original log cabin underneath. The road continues past statues of James McPherson and James A. Garfield and climbs thirty feet to the top of the ridge, where solitary figures are dotted around a two-acre clearing: George Washington, a dough boy, a headless William Tecumseh Sherman, Theodore Roosevelt. Deep in the brush in a natural amphitheater on the hillside below the clearing, a stone shelf bears a carved dedication: “Baughman Memorial Park. Named by Chas. Long. The rest of the inscription is obscured by moss and dirt.
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I grew up on this road named after the Stonewall Cemetery, And ended up living in the farm house less than 1/4 behind it. We had a blast as children playing here and even more parking here as a teen.
There are several legends and myths about this place, So I thought I would post some history about it. Stonewall Cemetery is located on Stonewall Cemetery Road, about  ½ mile from US-22, outside Lancaster, Ohio (Hocking Township, Fairfield County). The coordinates are 39° 41′ 28.55″ N, 82° 38′ 22.9″ W. Stonewall Cemetery a small family cemetery that is no longer active. It is maintained by the Fairfield County Historical Parks. The cemetery is kept locked to prevent vandalism. The inscription above the gate gives some history about the cemetery. It reads:
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While out taking a Sunday drive with the wife, we stumbled upon San Toy, one of the little cities of the black diamonds, the town of San Toy in Perry County Ohio is gone now, but it has a lot left to indicate that a thriving community once stood at this intersection in the rural backwoods of coal county
Between 1900 and 1927, San Toy was a prosperous company town. It was created by the Sunday Creek Coal Company to provide lodging for its employees at the two San Toy coal mines. How did it get its odd name? There are so many stories that it’s impossible to say. It was a fad of the Victorian era to give things Chinese-sounding names, so maybe San Toy just sounded good. Another story says that the town’s best boxer was named Sam Troy, and they wanted to name the town after him, but the handwriting on the town’s charter was misread and misprinted. Probably the closest thing to the truth is the story that the Sunday Creek Coal Company had invested in a Broadway musical called San Toy (which actually did exist around the turn of the century). When it flopped they lost a lot of money. The story goes that, surveying the town, one said to another, “Let’s hope this isn’t another San Toy”
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