12 January 2013 Marion County

With no heat at the house in Pennsylvania, we stayed in Ohio for a little weekend caching. The Marion County GeoTrail was released in 2012 and has been on our to do list. A cold winter's day with no snow was a great time to head southwest for this trail. The caches are very easy physically and not challenging to find, but feature some interesting areas of history.

Our first stop on the geotrail was in the small town of Caledonia. The great doors below are from a church in Caledonia which is listed on the National register of Historic Places. Caledonia was the boyhood home of future president Warren G. Harding for nine years of his youth. Besides the geotrail cache, we were able to find a multi here too.

Lynn School was active between 1897 and 1942. This restored schoolhouse is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It still appears to have most of the original desks and furnishings on the inside, but was not open for a visit when we were here.

This huge bucket is about all that remains in Marion of the Marion Steam Shovel Company. The company was purchased and closed on 1997 by a rival, but for those who remember the glory days of NASA spaceflight, this was the company that built the 6 million-pound NASA crawlers that moved spaceships from the hangers to the launch pads at Kennedy Space Center. They are an amazing bit of manufacturing history.

Marion has an interesting train depot. It is in nice shape from the outside, but wasn't open to walk in. The fancy brick walkways at the depot are from a different time.

The Marion County Courthouse is another of the local county buildings listed on the National Register. The building has a series of interesting reliefs in a band around the building.

Marion has a different way to move power around the city with these power standards in alleyways.