Feature Article on automobile guide book. Topic:
TRANSPORTATION
Written by Jim Sayre in December,
1996
1916 ROAD GUIDE POINTS TO MORE LEISURELY PACE IN COUNTY...Pg 3 |
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| Some of the brick schools, popular landmarks in the
road guide, survive. No trace remains of the school just north of the Anna traction line
power station, but the Finkenbine school at the guide’s 15.1 mile Wapak-Sidney mark
carries on with its varied career. Called the Blue Light Tavern in the 1940’s and
1950’s, the former school was later resurrected as a church, now the Northland
Missionary Baptist Church at 25-A/Port Jefferson Road (Sharp Road after 1980). Another school ("18.1 — Pass road and brick school house on right, power house on left") was the Jimtown school, then outside the Sidney city limits. Parkwood Elementary replaced it in 1930 as Sidney expanded. The brick school noted at a half mile from the Courthouse on South Main was the First Ward school built in 1883, razed in 1949, and replaced by Lowell Elementary. Redinbo school, south of Kirkwood Road, closed in 1929 and is now a residence. Rhodehamel school, built in 1870, was replaced in 1929 by Orange Township school, now the Sidney Missionary Church. Sidney King did not trust motorists to find their way back home on their own. While
pages 114-116 plot the southbound course from Wapak to Piqua, pages 121-122 reverse the
route, all in the same detail. But, the northbound road advisory contradicts its
southbound counterpart noted earlier in this article: "Road all gravel"
describes the Piqua to Sidney route while "Road good gravel" took motorists on
to Wapak. Despite errors, the guide seemed to work for early county motorists. Swanders
resident J.E. Wyatt, signing his copy in 1919, recorded a successful 100-mile trip home
from Mansfield via Galion, Bucyrus, Upper Sandusky, Kenton, Waynesfield and Wapak.
Today’s readers can laboriously track Wyatt’s long-ago trip, using the
guide’s dual index of towns and point-to-point routes. But, Wyatt had more time for
that sort of thing in the leisurely days of pre-Interstate Highway ‘joyrides’. |
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The Sidney trolley is pictured in the photo at left. Stops listed include Toledo, Findlay, Lima, Piqua, Troy and Dayton. |
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