Hopewell Culture Administrative History

CHAPTER FIVE
Relations with the Community (continued)

Ohio State Agencies and Other Management Partners

Along with the Ohio Historical Society and state prison authorities, Mound City Group managers have also cultivated close relations with the Ohio Highway Department. When highway workers installed new road signs in the Chillicothe area during the summer of 1948, Clyde King inquired why Mound City Group National Monument directional signs were not also positioned in light of new signs for the VA and Federal Reformatory. King requested from the highway division engineer four signs and received assurances that the signs would be manufactured. After the onset of the Korean War, King learned that while the signs were made, installing them would be delayed because of the national steel shortage. In the meantime, in March 1951, the highway department graded the road from the highway to the utility building, but budget and manpower prevented any regrading in 1952. Following the Korean War, King again contacted the Ohio Highway Department concerning proper directional signage, stressing the increasing numbers of tourists who relied upon state highway maps and local signs to find the monument. King learned that while the original order had been cancelled, a new order would be executed. Finally, in March 1954, six signs at three different points were installed directing visitors to Mound City Group National Monument. [29]

State highway crews painted a yellow centerline stripe at no charge from the visitor parking lot to the park entrance in 1964. Upon Superintendent James Coleman's request for increased motorist safety, the highway department also painted a solid yellow stripe indicating a no-passing zone on State Highway 104 approaching the monument's entranceway. [30]

In 1984, to commemorate State Highway 104 as "Camp Sherman Memorial Highway," the department installed a special marker just inside the entrance gate. The redesignated Ohio Department of Transportation worked cooperatively with park and local groups to reestablish the tree-lined historic Camp Sherman-era landscape by replacing the highway's canopy of silver maples. Saddened by abrupt removal of decayed, damaged, and diseased trees, the community coalition launched the tree-planting project in 1990. [31]

With impetus from the park's active safety committee, concern over road safety developed during the superintendency of Ken Apschnikat. The monument suggested a number of measures to improve motoring conditions in the area. To alleviate a growing number of visitor complaints, Apschnikat requested the department in 1985 install monument directional signs at the junction of U.S. Highway 23 and 35 to the northeast of Chillicothe. Because of the monument's comparatively low visitation figures, state engineers refused to honor the request. [32]

Issues related to parks, recreation, and tourism in the Chillicothe area usually involve participation and professional input from NPS. These issues, closely related to the park's mission, necessitated forming partnership relations between all levels of government. Mound City Group lent its support to local and state efforts to develop Mount Logan State Park in the mid-1960s. During the 1965 visitor season, the first exchange of evening interpretive campfire programs occurred between the area's state parks and Mound City Group. Superintendent John C. W. Riddle served as an instructor at the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Division of Parks and Recreation's annual Regional Interpretive Training Program at Pike Lake State Park in April 1965. Natural and cultural resource preservation were primary agenda items the following year as Superintendent James Coleman attended meetings of the South Central Ohio Preservation Society, serving Ross, Vinton, Pike, and Jackson counties. [33]

Perhaps the most vexing issue confronting Mound City Group managers entailed how to accommodate or deflect requests for use of monument grounds for special recreational events. Many activities simply did not lend themselves to the monument's mission of preserving and interpreting the Hopewell culture. Like the persistent local demand to have picnicking facilities, this and other recreational uses emerged from decades of local visitor use that the public fully expected to continue. Each year came requests to hold Easter egg hunts. While this innocent activity used to take place atop the mounds themselves, following park development in the early 1960s, the groups of young children searching for colored eggs and candies were accommodated on the mowed lawns of the visitor center. In 1966, James Coleman directed it be moved away from areas of heavy visitor use and the Chillicothe Child Guidance Club was the first to hold its annual egg-hunt on the lawn behind the superintendent's residence. [34]

Because the growing area needed more recreational space, Coleman participated in the August 1966 formation of a tourism promotion group attended by representatives of the Optimist Club, Chamber of Commerce, Adena State Memorial, Ross County Historical Society, Mead Paper Company, Ross County Automobile Club, and the Ohio Historical Society. Eugene Rigney of the Ross County Historical Society made it clear to the attendees of the key role Mound City Group National Monument played in the area's tourism economy. Rigney set forth his agenda for what the National Park Service should accomplish, including building a "Treasury Room" to display Mound City Group artifacts held at the Ohio Historical Society Museum, acquire land to construct a memorial to Camp Sherman, and rebuild the old picnic shelter. Rigney related his nagging fear that the monument could one day be turned over to the state, a move that he strongly opposed.

While Coleman could only refer local park proponents to the monument's master plan, the dilemma for providing nearby green space for egg-hunts, picnicking, and other recreational activities again presented itself during Bill Birdsell's tenure. Deflecting the activity to a more appropriate off-site area, Birdsell eagerly committed National Park Service technical assistance to the planning and development of Ross County's Camp Sherman Memorial Park. Philadelphia Park Planner Barry Bohnet visited the area in October 1973 to draft a plan for the new county park. Birdsell served as a member of the Camp Sherman Memorial Committee and focused all chronic efforts at siting World War I memorials and picnic shelter houses to this new park located on State Highway 104 between Chillicothe and the national monument. The county park also featured remnants of the defunct Ohio and Erie Canal. [35]

In order to explain fluctuations in visitation patterns, John C. W. Riddle asked the U.S. Weather Bureau in October 1962 to install a weather station at Mound City Group National Monument for daily monitoring by park staff. Regional weather reporting came from Columbus, with only precipitation recording in Chillicothe. While the U.S. Weather Bureau rejected the request for an official weather station, it did install a rain gauge in an area north of the visitor center. On February 15, 1963, Mound City Group began recording daily precipitation statistics for the U.S. Weather Bureau. [36]

In 1972, Mound City Group employees were monitoring another new gauge mounted atop a high concrete tower on Chillicothe's Riverside Street. Considerable risk was involved in reading the gauge as one had to climb a metal catwalk to the tower's midpoint, then take a iron ladder to the tower's pinnacle. Because of the danger in winter due to snow and ice conditions, two employees had to be dispatched to ensure safety procedures. By the mid to late 1970s, the National Park Service regularly provided daily weather statistics from a monument-based class B weather station to three local radio stations, a cable television company, the Chillicothe Gazette, and an area factory. By the early 1980s, Mound City Group employees were monitoring a precipitation and water-level gauge on the Scioto River for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. An equipment update of the class B weather station came in early 1985 when the National Weather Service installed an electronic temperature reading unit in the visitor center office area, replacing the alcohol and mercury thermometers. The device eliminated the daily excursion to the weather station to gather data, effectively saving twelve to fifteen man-hours annually. [37]

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