From the 1/26/06 Yellow Springs News:

 

 

Arts project to connect towns along U.S. 68

by Diane Chiddister

 

A new collaborative project aims to attract more arts-oriented tourists to southwest Ohio by marketing six towns along U.S. 68, including Yellow Springs, as a “cultural corridor.”

 

The project, called Excursion 68, seeks to present Bellefontaine, West Liberty, Urbana, Springfield, Yellow Springs and Xenia as arts destinations, said Lynda Collins-Pawley, the director of Excursion 68. The towns are located in Greene, Clark, Champaign and Logan counties.

 

...

 

http://www.ysnews.com/stories/2006/01/012606_artscorridor.html

 

"Ohio's U.S. 68:  Come for the hippies, stay for the party girls."

 

On a serious note, I will just opine that marketing the arts in Yellow Springs is going to be a lot easier than in the other towns.

I think there is some sort of crafts store in West Liberty proper, run by the Mennonites.

 

Bellefontaine isnt too special, but Urbana has a pretty impressive collection of old victorian architecture.  The town is in excellent shape. 

 

The scenic part of this route is perhaps more in the area east of West Liberty, up around the Piatt Castles and Zansefield, where there is that unexpected hill country, in the heart of the Ohio flatlands...

 

 

From the AP, 5/2/06:

 

 

PHOTO: The Civil War-era Mac-O-Chee castle, one of the Piatt Castles near West Liberty, Ohio, hope to revive tourist visits by joining a tourism corridor along U.S. 68 called Excursion 68.  AL BEHRMAN/Associated Press

 

On the Trail

Tourism corridors link attractions to increase appeal

By James Hannah

Associated Press

 

WEST LIBERTY, Ohio - Tourism traffic to the historic Piatt Castles has been steadily falling for 10 years, but Margaret Piatt hopes to save the attraction. By joining forces with a restored theater, a Frank Lloyd Wright house and other nearby tourist sites, she has helped create a travel corridor tied to a scenic highway.

 

Rising fuel prices and increasing competition for the entertainment dollar are putting pressure on tiny, one-stop tourist sites, and so states and regions are starting to pitch their tourist attractions as a package. New Hampshire has begun offering multisite Golden Pond and Robert Frost tours. Mississippi is starting a blues heritage trail, and another group wants to package sites associated with novelist William Faulkner.

 

...

 

http://news.cincypost.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060502/BIZ/605020338/1001/RSS04

 

Has anyone visited the Piatt Castles before?  Or even heard of them? 

 

I've been to both of them, the smaller maybe three or four times now, the larger one once.  They are good day-trip destinations from Dayton, maybe more for older people and architecture/history buffs.

 

The smaller one is quite interesting for the neogothic panellng and library.

 

The tours are pretty interesting as the guides have all sorts of interesting anecdotes about the familiy, who where one of the ealry influential families in the state, and even achieve national importance.

 

One of the Piatts was a very close friend of the famous (in the 19th Century) Indiana poet James Whitcomb Riley, who stayed at the castles quite a bit, and wrote a poem honoring his host.

 

The original Piatt house was actually log, and still stands, converted into a crafts shop.  Worth a look, even if one is not a crafts aficionado.

 

 

 

 

From the AP, 5/2/06:

 

 

Also in the works is the Mississippi Blues Heritage Trail, marking significant sites in the history of blues music. The first 10 sites on a 100-mile stretch are expected to have markers by the end of the summer. They include a radio station where B.B. King first performed professionally, the grave of singer Charley Patton, and the Riverside Hotel, where Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker and Sam Cooke stayed, and where Bessie Smith died when the building was a hospital.

 

 

I know my following post is not what this thread about (sorry), but the Blues heritage trail in Mississippi was my intended topic when I left Ohio for Louisiana State.

I have also been to the Piatt Castles but during a time I did not appreciate architecture.  Perhaps I should go back...

Alright, I'm a little behind responding here, but I've been to the Piatt Castles before when I was in elementary school, and went to Ohio Caverns for the rest of the day.  I'm sure I didn't enjoy the castles then as much as I would today.  I need to get back up there and take the tour.

 

This past winter I took a couple pics of the castles, but they were closed for the season...