Sunset at Ash Cave in Ohio’s Hocking Hills.
The Ohio River carves a path of history through the eroded hills on the west slope of the Appalachian Mountains, and in its watery wake, we followed. Starting off with a brief stop at the Ohio River town of Wheeling, West Virginia, then on to Marietta, Ohio, and ultimately, we take a restorative pause to experience the astonishing beauty of Hocking Hills State Park.
1st Stop: Wheeling, West Virginia
Spanning the Ohio River along the National Road (U.S. 40), the suspension bridge at Wheeling, West Virginia was the largest suspension bridge in the world from 1849-1851.
A triplet of circa-1950 all-metal Lustron houses were assembled at the corner of Edgwood Street and Edgwood Terrace in Wheeling, West Virginia. Two were subsequently sided, but the middle one retains its original surf-blue porcelain enamel panels, and the front house has a rarely seen Lustron garage. Click here for a comprehensive map of other Lustron house locations across the United States!
2nd Stop: Moundsville, West Virginia
Moundsville’s Victorian Gothic West Virginia Penitentiary first opened in 1876. The inmates moved out in 1995. Prison tours moved in. Ghosts, as they always do, followed the tourists.
The two millennia old Grave Creek Mound at Moundsville, West Virginia, was built to bury some ancient high muckety-muck with a mound of muck much higher than a two-story house. A grand tumulus heaped up a century or two before the birth of Christ, it defines the land along the Ohio River as belonging to someone else long before the west was mapped as America.
Moundsville, West Virginia, and the Ohio Valley from the top of the Grave Creek Mound.
3rd Stop: Monroe County, Ohio
Rolling through Monroe County, Ohio on our way to Marietta. Monroe County is the hilly part of Ohio where the Appalachian Plateau has been reduced to a rumpled rug of ups and downs.
4th Stop: Marietta, Ohio
Overlooking Marietta, Ohio’s Harmar district where the Muskingum River flows into the Ohio.
Marietta, Ohio, and the Ohio Valley from Lookout Point.
Well-loved Queen Annes at 5th & Scammel streets in Marietta, Ohio. Also, one of the best Free Little Libraries ever!
Enough exploring for the day; time to get our minds right and process what we experienced relative to why we were in Marietta, Ohio, in the first place. We got there by way of “The Pioneers,” David McCullough’s account of the first non-indigenous settlement in the old Northwest Territory.
The next morning, we set out to explore Marietta’s Mound Cemetery, which was established in 1801 at the site of an even older burial ground, a 2,000 year-old Hopewell Native American mound the settlers were intent on preserving.
America’s greatest concentration of Revolutionary War officers are buried in Marietta, Ohio’s Mound Cemetery. New England war veterans founded the Ohio Company of Associates, purchased over a million acres of land at the confluence of the Ohio and Muskingum rivers, and came out to Ohio in 1788 to live out the rest of their lives.
Spring Beauty (Claytonia virginica) flowers were in full bloom and blanketed the grounds of the Mound Cemetery. Brings to mind Simbelmynë, the small white flower that covers the graves of the Kings of Rohan in The Lord of the Rings lore.
Mound Cemetery from the top of Conus, the Hopewell Native American mound that was part of an entire complex of ancient earthworks constructed at Marietta, Ohio.
Altocumulus clouds backdrop the Harmar Cemetery entrance gate. Established in 1796 along the banks of the Muskingham Rover, Harmar Cemetery is the oldest in Marietta, Ohio.
5th Stop: Ohio University, Athens, Ohio
Some of the same New England Revolutionary War officers who founded Marietta went on to establish Ohio University, 45 miles away in Athens. Cutler Hall, facing the College Green, was completed as the edifice housing the first university west of the Alleghenies in 1819.
6th Stop: Hocking Hills State Park, Logan, Ohio
Heading west from Marietta and Athens, the subtle scenery of Ohio’s Appalachia turns spectacular in the hollows of Hocking Hills where cliff-forming and waterfall-framing Black Hand sandstone makes for stunning wonders like Ash Cave.
Cedar Falls at Hocking Hills tumbles over another ledge of Black Hand sandstone, which was deposited as a delta during the Mississippian period 355 million years ago from sands washed down from the eroding Acadian Mountains, the mountains that rose and fell before the Appalachians.
Old Man’s Cave, a massive, overhanging ledge of Black Hand sandstone named after the hermit that inevitably comes to live at such places.
The Sphinx of Hocking Hills in the glen at Old Man’s Cave.
7th Stop: Somerset, Ohio
Eastbound up Zane’s Trace through the anything-but-heroic Phil Sheridan’s hometown of Somerset, Ohio.
Catholics came to Ohio in 1827 to establish Holy Trinity parish in Somerset.
It’s not unusual to find some strange, unexplained, local tombstone trend that was for a time popular; like the ball-topped, elongated pyramids made of sandstone at Holy Trinity Catholic Cemetery in Somerset, Ohio.
8th & final Stop: St. Clairsville, Ohio
Last stop on our sweep through Ohio Valley Appalachia; a delightful throwback to the 1960s, Mehlman Cafeteria in St. Clairsville, Ohio. Mmmm…raisin pie.
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