The Morgantowner: Clinton County, Ohio

I know. I was in Ohio last month, in Clermont County just southwest of Clinton County. Both counties are considered metropolitan Cincinnati, but in the case of Clinton, it's far from the city and more small town than suburban. The big city (population 12, 500) is Wilmington.

For me, 2018 is over, and yet, there are dozens of meetings and political events this week. The Morgantown Council is meeting all day Sunday to discuss priorities for next year, and Tuesday we will meet with local state legislators to talk about our priorities. I said "No!" to all the Wednesday and Thursday meetings, and with no precipitation and slightly warmer weather predicted, I took off in our newer car, our 2015 Honda, for my next alphabetical county.

Wilmington is west of Morgantown, about 260 miles. There is a scenic route US 50 from Clarksburg, then Ohio 28 west and a fast route, on the Interstates by way of Columbus I drove in on the scenic route and back on the fast route. The scenic route, through small towns and farmland, was interesting, but the Interstate saved an hour and a half in time. Wilmington is slightly south of us as well as west, but weather.com reports that Wilmington's high temperature for December 13 is, on average, three degrees cooler than Morgantown's.

The Regular Hotel Chain, where I earned Platinum status for next year, does not have an outlet in Clinton County. I found a 1928 hotel called the General Denver, in the middle of town, with parking, breakfast and internet at a reasonable price. I took that.The first floor has a restaurant that was mobbed when I came in. People were still waiting for tables when I came back at 8 P.M., after I walked to a chain coffee shop about a mile away for dinner.

I had looked over the National Register of Historic Places for Clinton County. There were eighteen, but two were no longer extant and several were Adena period (possibly very early in the common era) burial mounds, which are hard to find unless they are marked. I picked five places to see in Wilmington, including the original building on the campus of Wilmington College, a Quaker institution going back to the nineteenth century, and five in the countryside and other towns.

There are ten incorporated places in the County, including Wilmington, and I thought I would check out all of them. One is supposedly partly in Clinton County, but I only found the part that wasn't; another is in the next county south, but a piece of it is in Clinton. Wednesday weather ran from 36 to 46, warmer than usual. Much of the day was dark, but the sun broke through for a bit, which I appreciated.

I saw everything I intended to see between 9:40 and 5:05 P.M. Thursday. I had lunch at that chain sub place in one of the small towns and dinner at a different chain coffee shop in Wilmington. Wednesday, I stopped for lunch at Union St. Diner in Athens, along the scenic route; Friday, I had a slice of pizza and a salad at a place inside Ohio Valley Mall, across the river from Wheeling, off Interstate 70, on the way home.

Many people in Wilmington are scruffy: overweight, smoking, tattoos. I looked pretty scruffy myself, in a flannel shirts and jeans. The people eating at the hotel, however, were dressed up, coiffed and clean. It seemed like a Reagan Republican kind of crowd to me. The women who worked at the hotel, Brynne, Tristin and Jackie, chatted me up, and walking around, people all said "Hi" even though they don't know me. Seventy-three per cent of the voters in this county voted for the current President in 2016, so I was worried. I saw a few anti-abortion signs and some saying "I support religious freedom" (meaning "I hate gays") and someone still had a 2016 Trump campaign sign up, but that is the ugliest it got. One of the waitresses at the restaurant Thursday (not my waitress) a pretty blonde with lots of tattoos, told me she had moved to Wilmington from Columbus after a divorce. She said that people from big cities can adjust to living in small towns, but small town people panic at the thought of living in a big city. I guess that's true, although it helped me that we were in Crescent City for more than two years before moving to Morgantown. Coming directly from Los Angeles to Morgantown would have been harder.

Most of Clinton County is farmland, apparently corn, already harvested with big grain silos scattered throughout the countryside. Although the county wasn't settled by European-Americans until around 1810, there were many beautiful brick farmhouses that looked to be from an earlier era, perhaps styles borrowed from an earlier era in Virginia or Pennsylvania. Many of the small towns had public libraries, which shows there is some interest in education, and for me, a convenient public bathroom.

I walked Thursday morning from 9:20 to 11 to all five historic sites in Wilmington, then took off, heading from the northwest part of Clinton County, to the north, the northeast, east, south and southwest areas, before heading back to the hotel by way of Cowan Lake State Park. In addition to Wilmington, I visited Harveysburg, Port William, Sabina (sab-eye-na), New Vienna, Lynchburg, Martinsville, Blanchester and Clarksville. Most of them are rust-belt decaying towns. Blanchester, to the southwest and the closest to Cincinnati, seemed to be the largest and most happening, with a Kroger just outside town, a smaller grocery store in the middle of town, and a cinema, only open on weekends. The booming commercial area in Wilmington is at the east end of town off US 22 (the old way to Wheeling and Pittsburgh). Interstate 71 is now the "Three C" highway from Cleveland to Columbus to Cincinnati. I drove that on the way home to Columbus to I-70 to Washington, PA, then home via I-79.

Wilmington is 34 miles southeast of Dayton, 52 miles northwest of Cincinnati and 62 miles southwest of Columbus. The radio stations came from Dayton mostly; cable television was from Cincinnati.

Here are the pics. Once again, my Galaxy 7 Android phone inexplicably erased some of my pictures.