This was our first real day of sightseeing. We spent most of the day at Historic Roscoe Village, one of those "living history" sites, with restored buildings and people dressed in period costumes, and demonstrations of life in a bygone era. Kind of like Colonial Williamsburg, but on a much smaller scale - Roscoe Village consists basically of a two-block stretch of a single street.
When we arrived, we were greeted by this sign:
Our first stop was the visitor center, where we watched an interesting video presentation about Ohio's canals. When Ohio first became a state in 1803, it was essentially a distant wilderness, with no easy way to move goods into or out of the area. A system of canals was built in the 1820's and 30's, crossing the state from Lake Erie on the north to the Ohio River on the south. These canals brought a great deal of economic prosperity to the region, but began to decline in importance when the railroads began to come in following the Civil War. They were finally abandoned in 1913, after being severly damaged in a period of heavy flooding.
That's the thumbnail version of the story. This Wikipedia article (w) about the Ohio and Erie Canal, one of the most important canals, has more detail, as well as a number of links to related sites, for those who are interested.
After watching the video, we spent some time looking at the exhibits in the visitor center. There was a large model of a canal boat:
...a diorama depicting the construction of a canal lock:
...and a large wall map of the route of the Ohio and Erie Canal:
The blue line on the bottom shows the route of the canal, while the line on the top illustrates the changes in elevation that the canal had to traverse, and the locations of the locks needed to acheive the elevation changes.
We left the visitor center, walking past a nice garden:
...and began to make our way up the street, stopping in at the various shops and living history exhibits. Our first stop was the blacksmith's shop, where a man explained the importance of the village blacksmith in a frontier town. Every type of metal implement - pots and pans, tools, plows, even nails - had to be hand made. You couldn't just go buy a bag of nails at Home Depot. Interestingly enough, he told us that, despite the common image, the blacksmith usually didn't make horseshoes. The reason, he explained, was that if the horse should kick and injure and disable the smith, the whole town would be in serious trouble. So the making of horseshoes was left to the smith's apprentices... who were presumably more expendable.
Next we visited a print shop. No Xerox machines here... instead:
Hanging on the wall was this plate for printing a large advertising poster:
What, you can't read backwards? OK, here's the picture again, reversed:
On the counter were a number of other posters, handbills, advertisements, etc., that had been printed up by the print shop workers. I found this one particularly amusing:
Talk about lost causes....
Next was a broom shop, where we saw this display of different types of brooms through the ages:
...and Terry inspected a broom wiring machine:
Not all of the buildings along the street were living history exhibits. Some were shops and boutiques:
...and some were private homes:
...and some were restaurants. We stopped for lunch at the Warehouse Steak and Stein, and then visited the house of the local doctor, where a man playing the role of Dr. Johnson told us about the original Dr. Johnson, who lived and practiced medicine in that same house in the 1800's. We saw his desk:
...his medical textbooks:
...his living room:
We looked at this display of vintage medicines:
...and went out back to look at Mrs. Johnson's garden
Terry rested on a bench for a few minutes while I went to look at a life size replica of a canal boat:
...including crew quarters:
...and some of the crew's laundry, hanging out to dry:
We then visited a one room schoolhouse:
...where a woman playing the role of the schoolteacher told us about 19th Century schools:
...and Terry discovered that she doesn't fit very well in those little desks any more (neither did I).
In the first schoolroom picture, above, in the upper left and right corners, you can see some "reading lesson" posters. I found these quite entertaining. Here's a close up of some of them:
Notice that the three lessons in that picture are numbered 4, 6 and 7. I wonder what happened to lesson 5.
We then stopped for some refreshment at a wine bar, outside of which was this rather curious sign:
...and then we drove back to Apple Valley.
That evening, Bob and Jean drove up to spend the night, and the following day, with us. I had given Bob what I thought were very specific directions to the resort. But I guess I wasn't quite clear enough, because they called and said they were lost. So I got them to tell me what road they were on, and tell me the name of the next crossroad they came to, and with that information, I was able to locate their position on my GPS. Then I told them "I know right where you are - stay there!" Terry and I drove out to rescue them, and we went to dinner at Jake's, a steakhouse in Mount Vernon.