Pike County’s Eager Inn was the first stone inn built in Ohio in 1797. Located at the junction of Pike Lake Road and Morgan’s Fork Road, it housed guests until 1870. Prior to the Civil War, the inn was a stop for slaves traveling north on the Underground Railroad. It’s now one of eight properties on Pike County’s National Register of Historic Places.
The city of Jackson was originally named “Salt Lick Town” by settlers in 1795 because it contained the Scioto Salt Licks. Ohio passed legislation regulating salt mining at the licks in March 1803, just one month after Ohio became a state, crystalizing salt mining’s status as Ohio’s first industry.
The Flight of the Hawk Park, located off Route 33 in Lancaster, welcomes visitors entering the Sugar Grove area with life-sized metal sculptures of deer and wild turkeys, some of Ohio’s native wildlife. The highlight of the six-acre park is a 2,500-pound sculpture of a red-tailed hawk perched in its nest 42 feet above the ground. Sugar Grove artist Ric Leichliter designed all of the park’s sculptures.
Fairfield County is the site of a string of events being held through 2015 to commemorate 150 years since the end of the Civil War. More than 300,000 men from Ohio volunteered to serve in the Union army, the third-largest Union enrollment behind only New York and Pennsylvania. Nine soldiers from Fairfield County received the Congressional Medal of Honor for their contributions during the Civil War.
The Orchard House, built in the 1850s on 12 acres of land outside Granville, is not your typical bed and breakfast. In the 1950s it was the first licensed home to alcoholics in Ohio. Since 2010, the owners of the home have invited guests to enjoy the farm-like atmosphere. Several resident animals grace the property, including a slew of llamas and alpacas, a pot-bellied pig and two Nigerian dwarf goats.
The ghost of Dr. Joseph Lowry is rumored to haunt the Briggs Lawrence County Public Library in Ironton. The library was built on the grounds where the physician’s house previously stood. Lowry died in his sleep in 1933, and the local undertaker admitted to mistreating Lowry’s body out of revenge for an unpaid debt.