Follow Ohio Route 124 east out of Hillsboro for about a mile, and you’ll arrive at the World’s Largest Horseshoe Crab.
At 68 feet long and 28 feet wide, it’s big enough to house meetings and weddings, which it did in an earlier incarnation as an attraction at the Freedom Worship Baptist Church in Blanchester, Ohio. It was there that a person named Gene Sullivan jumped over it on his motorcycle, as part of a religious promotion called “Jump for Jesus.”
In 2015, a person named Ben Sexton bought it, cut it up with a chainsaw, and reassembled it in Hillsboro, 25 miles east of Blanchester.
It’s worth noting that HIllsboro’s concerns extend beyond crabs:
The Hartman Log Cabin is on Route 50 in Williamsburg, Ohio. Members of the Hartman family built it in 1838, after they emigrated from Germany in the 1750s and moved to what is now Ohio in 1801.
Constructing a house of logs was not a new idea in the 1830s. It is thought that the first log cabins in North America were built by Swedish immigrants, who settled in the Delaware River Valley in the 1630s. Those folks brought log construction expertise with them from Scandinavia, where cabins made of logs had been built since medieval times. Cruder log structures were used there as far back as the Bronze Age (3,500 B.C.).
People generally built log cabins where suitable timber (tall, straight, and relatively knot-free) grew nearby. The length of the largest available logs often determined the building’s dimensions, and this can be seen in the longest logs on the front of the Hartman cabin.
The flat fronts of those logs show they had been shaped, or hewn, before construction, resulting in a relatively smooth building exterior. In contrast, early log cabins were often built of unshaped logs. This took less work, but round logs were harder to seal against the weather. To fill the gaps between the logs in early cabins, builders used whatever came to hand — materials such as mud, small stones, sticks, and even corncobs.
The Hartman cabin’s logs are notched at the ends, so they fit together at the corners to stabilize the structure. Why not use nails? Because log cabins settle and compress over time, and nails pull out.
The Hartman cabin also has a stone foundation, which means it had an actual floor inside when it was built. Cabins without foundations had only earth floors and were often temporary shelters, to be lived in while more permanent housing was built. They were then converted to barns or used for storage.
Log cabins have developed a mythic reputation in the U.S., maybe because seven presidents were born or lived in them — plus one who made the claim. The ones who did: Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln, and James A. Garfield. The one who didn’t: William Henry Harrison, who wanted to be known as a man of the people, but who actually lived on an estate in Vincennes, Indiana, called Grouseland.
Log homes are still built today, using kits of pre-cut logs, and can reach 3,000 square feet or more in size. They are considered sustainable, and thus part of a “green” approach to living.
The Hartman Log Cabin continues to be used. The local county renovated it and rents it out for weddings, parties, and reunions. Other public log buildings include some U.S. National Park lodges, which are quite large.
So, what’s the world’s largest log cabin? It’s the Château Montebello Hotel, in Montebello, Quebec, built in 1930.
__
Photos of the Hartman Cabin by the author.
The photo of the Château Montebello Hotel is from Wikimedia Commons and is in the public domain. It was orginially on a postcard.
Skyline Chili is the largest chain of Cincinnati “chili parlors.” This branch is on Route 50, east of downtown Cincinnati. The Smithsonian calls Cincinnati chili one of the “20 most iconic foods in America.”
If you plan to stop, save some room in your tummy:
A five-way
This is a “five-way,” as served at Skyline Chili. A five-way includes chili, spaghetti, beans, onions, and cheese. Note that this is a “regular” serving, which means that there is a larger portion available for those of you who are really hungry.
The “chili” part is not really chili as it is known in the rest of the country, but instead a Mediterranean-style meat sauce that contains a hint of cinnamon.
Do Cincinnatians really like this dish? Apparently so, since every year they consume over two million pounds of the meat sauce and one million pounds of the cheese that tops it.
It’s interesting that the dominant chili parlor chains do not serve alcoholic beverages such as beer, which could be an ideal accompaniment for this dish. As a result, the glass you see in the picture contains iced tea.
Newport and Covington are Kentucky towns across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, Ohio. In the past, they have not done as well economically as Cincinnati, but their fortunes seem to be improving. The photo above shows an interesting building on the Kentucky side of the river.
Culinary adventure in Newport
There is a pedestrian bridge across the river between Cincinnati and Newport, and Newport has established itself as a center for dining, movies, and other entertainment.
Entertainment in Newport
In 1860, the Newport building shown below was the birthplace of General John T. Thompson, who invented the Thompson submachine gun, better known as the Tommy gun. Gen. Thompson died in 1940, dismayed that the Tommy gun had become a gangster weapon of choice.
The Anderson Ferry has been taking folks across the Ohio River between Ohio and Kentucky since 1817. It is ten miles west of downtown Cincinnati and just fifty yards or so south of Route 50.
The ride across the river takes about fifteen minutes and cost just $5.00 per car, when the photo was taken. No credit cards accepted.
There are 169 miles of Route 50 in Indiana, from the outskirts of Cincinnati on the east to Vincennes and the Wabash River, at the border of Illinois on the west.
On Route 50 in eastern Indiana
A closer look at the building above:
Watchful eyes
In Butlerville, Indiana:
The gas station and convenience store shown below is on Route 50 in Brownstown, Indiana. At this store, as at other similar stores in the state, you are prohibited from buying more than 50 cans of smokeless tobacco in a single day.
Lawrenceburg is a town of about 5,000 people on Route 50, next to the Ohio River in eastern Indiana.
The levee gate at the end of Walnut Street
The river is on the other side of the levee shown in the photo above. The gate in the center can be closed to protect against floods.
Turn around, and you might see a train passing through town:
Looking north up Walnut Street
The Lawrenceburg police are in control:
Drive carefully
Lawrenceburg was the birthplace of James B. Eads, whom you can learn more about in the piece on the St. Louis riverfront. Lawrenceburg honored him by naming Route 50 through Lawrenceburg the Eads Parkway.
This building, fronting on Route 50 in the center of North Vernon, was once a lodge of the Improved Order of Red Men, a fraternal order with chapters in many American states.
How many chapters? Where located? How governed? Etc?
All this is covered in excruciating detail in the 623 pages of the Official History of the Improved Order of Red Men, Lindsay, Conley, and Litchman, Fraternity Publishing Company, 1893.
It’s free to read online. If you’re interested, search for it.
In 1866, after the end of the Civil War, some Americans were unhappy with their economic prospects. Among them were the Reno brothers — Frank, William, Simeon, and John — who lived in Indiana. They decided to improve their financial situation by robbing trains.
Perhaps they were inspired by attacks on trains by both sides during the war, intended to disrupt supply operations. In any case, the Reno brothers were the first civilians to go into the business. They assembled a gang and headed for Seymour, Indiana. At 6:30 p.m. on October 6, 1866, they committed the first train robbery in U.S. history, escaping with over $10,000, a substantial sum in those days.
Two members of the gang were arrested, but they were released after the only person willing to testify against them was shot and killed, and the Reno brothers carried on. During the next two years they robbed three more trains. One robbery, in Marshfield, Indiana, netted them $96,000.
Distressed by the condition of law enforcement in their state, the citizens of Indiana formed not just one, but two vigilante groups: the Jackson County Vigilance Committee, and the Scarlet Mask Society. As a result, vigilantes were readily available when three captured members of the Reno gang were being carried across the state by train.
The vigilantes yanked the gang members off the train and hung them from a nearby tree. A few days later, the vigilantes hauled three more captured gang members off a wagon. They hung them, too, from the very same tree. The tree was near Seymour, at the spot shown in the photo above. (The cross street is Route 50.) It has been known ever since as Hangman Crossing.
The Reno brothers themselves escaped being hung at Hangman Crossing because they were in jail. One, John, was being held in Missouri, but Frank, William, and Simeon were imprisoned in New Albany, Indiana. On December 12, 1868, one hundred vigilantes descended on the New Albany jail, overpowered the prison guards, led the three brothers outside, and hung them on the spot.
You can visit the graves of the Reno brothers. They are in Seymour’s city cemetery, fenced off and clearly marked. Except for John’s, that is. By virtue of being imprisoned in Missouri, he escaped lynching and died peacefully in 1895.
Hangman Crossing is now an unincorporated community. If you wish to live there, you might buy a house in a near-by development. It is known simply as “The Crossing.”
