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How it all started

Lynnda and I have done a prolonged celebration of our 50th wedding anniversary. This only happens once, and we wanted to enjoy it to the max. We started in mid-June with a second honeymoon to Disney World and dinner at the top of the Contemporary Resort. The weekend of the actual anniversary date we had a special cake and celebration with our church family. Last weekend, Lynnda and I celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary with our three children and most of our grandchildren at a mutually convenient resort since they all live out of state. That’s why I do the work I do at Shale ...

Rufus Putnam’s map

Marietta’s founder Rufus Putnam was energetic, creative, and persistent. Give him an impossible task and he’d figure out a way to “git ‘er done.” Early in the Revolutionary War, he served with the rank of Colonel as an engineer. Engineers built structures, fortifications, and ...

The first Fourth of July in Marietta was a celebratory feast

The first Fourth of July in Marietta had a special meaning not only because it came just a dozen years after the birth of the nation, but it also occurred at the conclusion of the first meeting of the directors of the Ohio Company who had worked to set up a form of government in the Northwest Territory. The meeting was held near the confluence of the Ohio and Muskingum rivers. At the conclusion the directors wrote the basic rules governing the small town and posted it on the smooth trunk of a large beech near the river on July 4, 1788. As the book “Pioneer History: Ohio Valley, ...

July 4, 1788 – “We Were One Great Family”

July 4, 1788, in Marietta, Ohio, dawned warm, humid, and windy. Rain threatened. Joseph Buell was a soldier at Fort Harmar. His journal entry for July 4, 1788: “This day was celebrated with thirteen rounds from the six pounder (cannon) and repeated again at four o’clock. The troops ...

MOV Climate Corner: What happened to ‘all-of-the-above’ energy?

Federal elected officials in the House, Senate and Oval Office have frequently stated that their energy policy is “all of the above,” meaning coal, oil, natural gas, wind, solar, nuclear, hydroelectric, geothermal, and more. But what appears in the “Big, Beautiful Budget Bill,” which is now before the U.S. Senate, seems to be a war on renewables and gift to the fossil fuel industry. Without clean energy tax credits, which were voted on by Congress with the Inflation Reduction Act, we miss most of the “above.” In Washington County we are seeing plans for data centers as part ...

What if Marietta had a flood wall?

The Mid-Ohio Valley is home to Parkersburg, where a 20,000-foot wall and levee hold back any potential flood, and Marietta, where rising waters flow through the streets whenever the rivers decide to leave their banks. The wall in Parkersburg was built following the 1937 flood. ...