by Ken Lahmers, Aurora Advocate Editor
When I left you last week after detailing the first part of my road trip to Carroll County, I had arrived in Carrollton, the county seat and a village of about 3,200 people.
Originally called Centretown, it was renamed Carrollton after Charles Carroll of Maryland, a signer of the Declaration of Independence.
Many members of the "fighting McCook" family of Civil War fame lived in the town, and the historic McCook House near the courthouse is now operated by the Ohio Historical Society.
Carrollton also is the birthplace of retired thoroughbred jockey Eddie Maple, who rode Secretariat to victory in the horse's last race in the 1970s, and also won two Belmont Stakes titles.
Back in my college days, I enjoyed following the career of the jockey who grew up just one county seat town away from my native New Philadelphia.
After driving through the downtown and past the courthouse, I headed west on Route 39 to Dellroy, where I stopped for an ice cream cone on the square.
Atwood Lake region
I recall patronizing that place as a kid when my folks and I went for drives. The former Heather's Restaurant, an old building where we ate occasionally on Saturday nights, sets vacant and showing its age.
Atwood Lake is a stone's throw from Dellroy, and its lodge is where my high school senior banquet took place. Atwood's golf course has a hole 700-plus yards long, which occasionally is used for an airplane landing strip.
Late Aurora Councilman Jim Burns owned a property there and used to tell me stories about visiting it.
I headed up Route 542 along the north side of Atwood Lake, a Muskingum Watershed Conservancy District lake, past the East Marina and into Magnolia, a town of slightly fewer than 1,000 people where former Cleveland Browns great Vince Costello grew up.
It's bordered on the south side by a levee which was built at least 40 years ago for protection from high water from the Sandy Creek and Bolivar Dam, a dry dam about 7 miles to the west.
Another impressive sight is Elson's Magnolia Flouring Mill, a 3 1/2-story wood structure built in 1834 and still used as a feed mill. It once was situated on the Sandy and Beaver Canal.
Just outside of town to the north is the Magnolia Drag Strip, where my dad and I watched drag races on Sunday afternoons when I was growing up. It still operates.
The town also is where Cuyahoga Falls News-Press reporter Steve Wiandt of Ravenna grew up.
Couple of final towns
Heading west on Route 183, I came to my dinner site -- the Crossroads Restaurant -- where I ate several times while living in Tuscarawas County. It's at the intersection of Route 800.
Right across Route 183, a huge complex of buildings, which will house all grade levels for the Sandy Valley schools, is going up right next to the current SV High School.
I admired a beautiful tapestry hanging on a wall at the Crossroads showing all of the existing Sandy Valley schools in Magnolia, East Sparta and Waynesburg.
I traveled south on Route 800 to Mineral City in northern Tuscarawas County, where I looked for remnants of the old Pennsylvania and B&O railroad lines which split at the south end of town. I found none.
The Pennsy-B&O tracks used to run south past the Dover Dam to the west side of Dover.
The B&O tracks out of Mineral City pick up about 4 miles north of town near Sandyville, where they run through East Sparta and north to Canton.
The last small town I passed through before returning to Portage County was East Sparta (population about 800), where I worked at U.S. Ceramic Tile Co. one summer during college.
Sadly, my uncle, who was a longtime foreman at the plant, told me it closed last year. About the only retail businesses in town are two bars and a convenience store.
Some final thoughts
Even though gas prices will remain high this summer, I hope to go on some more road trips. I believe in the philosophy "if you don't do it now, you might never get the chance again."
I hope to take a day each to cruise through Columbiana, Medina and Wayne counties, and go to Coshocton, Zanesville and Newark on a Friday night/all day Saturday excursion.
So many of us are so busy with our daily lives that we can't get away from our hometowns and the large cities where we work such as Cleveland and Akron.
We drive on interstate highways to get to places as fast as we can. But I've found that there are many treasures to see along our two-lane, windy back roads.
E-mail:
klahmers@recordpub.com
Phone: 330-688-0088 ext. 3155