Rusty Shackleford

Looks like South Lebanon.

I've checked out the history of the Little Miami Railroad. It was mostly phased out by the 1970s, which jibes with the apparent start of the decline of Morrow and South Lebanon. Loveland is also a Little Miami RR town. I remember driving around Loveland in the mid 70s, pre-trail and suburban colonization, and it pretty much reminded me of a jumbo version of Morrow on a steep hill. Loveland is what Morrow could become if a lot of development pressure to improve things came to bear on it. The bike trail is progressively more crowded the closer to Loveland you go. North of Morrow, the trail is fairly dead all the way to Xenia. Basically South Lebanon and north is sedate, south of South Lebanon and you have heavy suburban usage of the trail.

The older town area is pretty much a slum that is in a very slow process of being gentrified by pressure from development coming in along Rt 22 from the Landen area (it's basically the farthest northeast part of what you could call the Cincinnati metro area). Just to clarify what rob_1412 said, it's already been allowed to fall apart and anything nice you see now is from development pressure. I've had little kids throw rocks at me there when I've been riding on the bike trail, I left a bike outside a shop in town once and when I came out there was a strange epoxy like goo on the seat, and I once saw a young mother beating her 2-3 yr old on the street. The pattern seems to be that the decrepit part of town is along the former railroad tracks. There are some really interesting looking old buildings in town, like one store front that has a clock face embedded in the stone front (one of the images above shows it), but it's clearly been decades since there was any commercial energy in that town. Morrow is ringed by affluent suburban development. There was once a ski hill outside Morrow, and the land is now being developed as housing. Little Miami High School is about 1 mile west on 22. It's all about location... you can find a few row houses there for $40K.

Jeffrey, I have been transcribing my mother's notes. Here is one paragraph she wrote on the makeup of North Dayton. The time frame would have been around when she entered public school, about 1924 or so: I've been learning new stuff I didn't know as I transcribe her notes. "Irish Dunkards"? Never heard of 'em. Also she witnessed a classroom fight that allegedly lead to the death of Principal Wogaman of an old Harrison School, which was torn down and rebuilt as Wogaman Elementary (they moved around town a lot - there were family problems.)

Another subjective data point, this time on the first generation European stock in Dayton in the early 20th century - My mother (born in 1918) grew up in Old North Dayton. From what I recall, she said that the area up around Troy Street was extremely Hungarian. I think she said there were quite a few Slavs around up there, too. From what she told me, North Dayton in the early 1900s seemed to attract eastern Europeans. I need to re-review the notebooks in which she recorded her "life's history" a few years before she passed away in order to get this straightened out. I don't remember her telling me or talking about many other ethnic groups in particular, except Hungarians.

Jeffrey, I grew up in Dayton the 1960s and 70s. I read and heard about the things being done in the area back then. Your analysis is completely correct. I'd say that (1), lack of good roads, was the most significant factor between the two when one tries to account for the fact that there isn't even any industry in western Montgomery County. It just used to take too damned long to get through the west side. As always, I love your graphics. The "empty quarter" is certainly apropos. That whole pie shaped wedge area between Rt 49/Salem Ave and Germantown Pike in western Montgomery is terra incognita to almost all Daytonians. To supplement your linked article about the circumferential non-freeway belt around Dayton, the story of early I-675 planning up to its initial construction as a stub between Medway and Rt 35 in Beavercreek should be explored. I believe that 675 was originally (in the 50s) planned to be a beltway around Dayton similar to 670 in Columbus or 275 in Cincy. The western part was first whacked as basically not being supported by a population in that part of the county (chicken --> egg effect.) I also recall that the initial building of the final alignment of 675 was deferred for several years by pressure from black Dayton leaders including Mayor James McGee who argued that the routing of 675 as finally planned was "unfair" by not providing better access from the west side, and would drain the economic energy of Dayton out eastward. Well, what do you know, he was right!!! :( Although, building some form of interstate belt around Dayton was basically a matter of regional economic competitiveness and survival. IE, ensure the Dayton region survived as a whole by selectively gutting part of the region in favor of others. It seemed to be somewhat obvious even back in the 1970s that the Dayton area was in slow motion decline and that in order to save the region as an economic entity, local leaders and planners were "triaging" the less sexy areas of Dayton, namely west, northwest and southwest, in favor of the southern and eastern suburbs.

Personally, I think that the actual issue is that 'truly' new business formation (indicating net area population growth) falls far below the pace of commercial abandonment. You're saying that the issue is lack of business. Well, that implies that the old space should not have been abandoned in the first place. However, of course, that flies in the face of capitalism, which comes down to - you stop expanding and you essentially die. Abandoned commercial real estate is one aspect of waste, and another is landfills filled with plastic crap. The only way to discourage such waste would be centralized Soviet style planning. It's in the genome of capitalism to chew everything in its path.

Jeffrey, you seem to be saying that commercial/architectural Kleenex is a good thing because it creates a steady supply of low cost business space for the future. Is that *really* a good thing? That stuff around Dayton that you photographed doesn't look like it will ever be filled up with activity. The businesses just shift their center of gravity over time and chew up and uglify the land. PS: is that an "old" Applebee's in the third and fourth from last pictures above?

That's what is so hard to take about this. The photo essays here of proud old Southeastern Ohio iron and manufacturing towns show weathered dignity and let one imagine industrial titans and great men with dignity and "mojo" filling the valleys with factories and mills. Even in decline, a lot of that stuff is still beautiful, 100+ years after it was built and decades after it was abandoned. With THIS stuff, the shells of big boxes and shopping centers, it's basically just unsightly crap. The exposed skeletons of marketing facades. Post-apocalyptic is the phrase I'm looking for. Lots of these scenes look familiar, just the brands and signs stripped off, and they spoke of the future when they were built. In reality they were architectural Kleenex. I've always thought that commercial developers should always be required to build stuff that would be acceptable in appearance even if the commercial branding was stripped away. An abandoned Taco Bell or Rally's just looks so crappy.

It's Great 'n Dayton! Uhhhh... wait. :cry: "The future once happened here." Very, very sad.

Wonderful work. And that gets back to the whole urban renewal fashion of the 60s. Those finer-grained "human scale" neighborhoods probably seemed crowded, dumpy and too old, and most damning, *NO PARKING* available. Basically the prime criteria for construction for the last 40 years has been to have lots of parking spaces.

This "ghost town" thing that can still be readily observed is not unknown. I ran across the following. It is a plat map of the now-defunct village of Fort Ancient, Ohio, which is now completely subsumed by the Ft Ancient State Memorial land and Morgan's Canoe business. (This is a capture from the Warren County Auditor's Office property search.) It's showing streets and lots that can't possibly be discerned today.

Quite a journey of the mind that you pulled together, Jeffrey. As always, top shelf stuff. Very intriguing. It makes me wish that some local public TV station would put together a series about lost Miami Valley crossroads and villages.

I just read that. What a freaking tool! Whiny assed jerk. I'd do three things at this point. First, write a rebuttal letter to the editor and methodically list the timeline of how you attempted to resolve this. Second, talk to your credit card company (and I have no idea why you let this go so long - that's the whole point of credit cards - chargebacks.) With some luck it will help get his credit card processing shut down. Third, file a formal complaint with the state Attorney General against the guy. I did this once when my phone bill was being slammed with charges from a pay phone booth in Chicago by some long distance company. The Attorney General will force the guy to account for how he expedited your order.

Greenmont Village: http://www.cyburbia.org/forums/showthread.php?t=17511

"Little Boxes". What a topic. Yeah, I remember seeing the actual little boxes driving up into the city in Daly City. Of course, THOSE little boxes are diminutive shacks compared to what the "Weeds" characters live in. And I have had an idea off and on about driving around areas of the tri-state with a camcorder and dubbing appropriate TV-series-based music over drives through the scenery. For "Little Boxes" it would definitely be a drive down and around the Mason-Montgomery Rd corridor.

I thought of one ironic thing. My first job out of college was in the Bay Area (I grew up in Dayton.) I remember driving around areas like San Jose or Sunnyvale just thinking to myself how mind-numbingly *alike* all of the houses there are. Silicon Valley is like a Mediterranean climate version of Huber Heights. But nobody there ever complained about the mind roasting sameness of the middle class architecture (well, it was cheap slapped together shit when Sunnyvale and Santa Clara were platted out in the 1960s.)

My theory is still - this guy is long gone. Dead, in a coma or in the hospital, or an accident; or, left the area permanently with no forwarding address; or some severe change of circumstances (bankruptcy, etc.) I am not a lawyer, but - if he conducted business through an LLC or a corporation, then all you have to go against are the assets of the company. If it's a sole proprietorship, then he's personally responsible, BUT, bankruptcy would probably invalidate any such claim. And again, IANAL. How did you pay for this? Check, money order, Paypal, or credit card? Paypal or credit card can be disputed, but only within 60 days of the billing date where the charge appears on the statement. Check or M.O., you're out of luck... I checked their web site. Somebody has removed all of the "buy" links on the product ordering pages. Lastly, I just used my Paypal account to find out what they say about them by attempting a transaction. Here is what I have: Recipient: Cornhole Etc. ([email protected]) Recipient Status: Verified Business Member (0) I'm not even in business (I just sold a few things on Ebay in the past) and I have a count of "5".

I can see that one big risk of being a homeowner in Dayton is that your property becomes passively associated with the blight just by being in the way of it. I spy a few white and one yellow boxes in my old stomping grounds of Belmont and Hearthstone, and quite a few vacancies in Eastmont. The problem in Dayton being that there are no significant natural, cultural or man made boundaries between blighted neighborhoods and presently stable neighborhoods. It would not take a lot for the stuff in the east end to creep southward into Ohmer Park, Walnut Hills, Belmont, and then finally Patterson Park, the "leet" southern neighborhood in Dayton.

That's the thing, isn't it? It's tough to find a small town in this part of the country that is self-sufficient and doing OK. IE, is there such a thing as a prosperous small town that doesn't depend on tourism or big city commuters to prop it up? That description probably only fits the towns that have some huge multinational factory nearby.

Burr Oak State Park has a Glouster address. I stayed at a cabin there a few years ago that we shared with a mouse. :lol: Wonderful, remote, scenic area. It feels like the absolute end of the earth.

"South Lay-bo-nan - save Cash with Kash!" Anyone remember that? 15 years ago South Lebanon was about as downscale for Warren County as I could imagine. Only the "Deliverance" vibe of Morrow was a notch lower. South Lebanon was once a solid part of the Appalachian Van Allen belt of resettlement around Cincinnati. Now a S. Lebanon address is "prestigious" with $450K golf course homes. I liked it much better when it was just hills, fields and rednecks. It sounds to me like they are trying to make the development sound like "The Brown", excuse me, "The Greene" with its built in apartments. I think that's what's really going on.

AFAIK, Jamestown hasn't had its "good times" in my near 50 year lifetime. Jamestown had several manufacturers in a small industrial park outside of town back in the 70s but industrial space around there is now like a ghost town.

Y'know, every time I'm around some real churchy or conservative people and they say "let's play CORNHOLE!!!" I really wince. I'm NEVER going to get used to the name of the game! :evil:

And, I am not a lawyer. Another thought occurred to me - the guy could be dead or disabled. Anything is possible. I don't know if the police would be cooperative. It was just a thought. And, if you paid by mail (mailed a check) and not Paypal, then this may be under the jurisdiction of the post office (mail fraud). Good luck.