So congratulations. You have found the theoretical starting point for this zany enterprise. My goal within this space is to tackle the entire breadth and depth of Columbus, Ohio history, interspersed with a ton of personal insight you couldn’t possibly secure anywhere else.
How might you go about this? a reasonable person could certainly ask. Well, so much as this may be considered a sane undertaking, there are or soon will be four different ways to navigate this site, of which, I must say, clicking through sequentially from post to post has to be the least interesting. I like to think there are Easter eggs buried here, too, sure. There is absolutely some material on here that no one has yet seen, which in some weird way represents my favorites – these are like the buried gems or something. When you really stop to ponder things, and consider that, if you write a great piece of historical interest, it’s just going to wind up on, as best case scenario, in public knowledge and the giant greedy maw of Wikipedia, then you have to consider that maybe it’s better if no one ever reads your stuff, actually.
But anyway, on to the task at hand. The first job I ever held was at a McDonald’s fast food restaurant in Mansfield, Ohio. At the time, whether it is still there or not, there was one of those familiar green highway signs directly in front of this establishment, announcing the mileage from here to two nearby cities:
Cleveland 73
Columbus 73
Which is visually fascinating all on its own. But if I were to ask any random stranger from any other state (and possibly any random stranger from Ohio, as well), which of these two cities he/she is most familiar with – as in, not necessarily visited, but has heard the most about – he/she would without fail cite Cleveland. Yet Columbus is in fact the largest and most populous city in the state, it has been for decades. I still find people who don’t believe me on this. Columbus is the 15th largest city in the entire United States. Upon graduation from high school, if I had to handicap the skewed percentages, I would say that 20 of my classmates (at the bare minimum) moved to C-bus for every one that ended up in Cleveland, mostly because we considered the state capital a slam dunk far more interesting place to be. Columbus leaves much more famous cities like Boston and Seattle in the dust, population wise, it’s not even close.
And yet no one has ever heard of Columbus, Ohio. The purpose of fleshing out this blog shall be to investigate why. Also in hopes of shedding a light on why I continue to find this city so immensely compelling. Because even though it currently is the state’s largest city, and has enjoyed a sustained boom for decades now, neither of these facts will necessarily always be the case – and yet I have a feeling that this doesn’t matter, that even if on the decline, this city will always represent Ohio’s most fascinating offering.
So dig in, and enjoy! This is sure to be one wild yet informative ride. All content is written by me, of course. The crudely drawn clickable maps are my handiwork as well, in case you couldn’t figure that out. Most pictures were snapped by yours truly, although I have pilfered the collections of friends and family on occasion, and hope to gain access to historical archives at some point down the road.
And, as I also muddle through designing this site myself, the various means for exploring it are a work in progress. I would say the experience has to be better on a laptop or desktop PC, but it should all hopefully work on mobile, too. As far as navigation is concerned, you certainly may click on one of the tabs up top and go from there. A menu to the right allows dipping into a specific year. Other exciting developments in these pages will follow.
Let us begin this primer course, then (at least for as long as it is able to exist online, without being taken down for copyright infringement) by considering the following piece:
Can you read this? If not I will find a way to upload in a better format. But basically my objective with this blog is to a) dig deeply into each of these stories, and many more, b) dissect how Columbus has managed to remain the country’s best kept secret thus far, c) divulge the inside tales I have, the personal histories as related by those I know, that will hopefully help to connect some of this material. I want the reader to eventually be able to, say, understand fully what is going on in this city from one end to the other in, like, the month of April 1979, or January 1994, or December 2006, in a way that would prove impossible via any other source.
