Hovering between Oxford and Eaton is the rural village of Camden. Camden actually has a really fantastic supply of rural vernacular houses, but you won't see them here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If cleaned up a bit, it'd look like New Hope, Pennsylvania.

Wow... have never heard of this place... and at a quick glance, it has some mighty nice historic resources.  Worth a trip some day.

 

It turns out that the school building is a successful tax credit project.... see this link:

 

http://www.occh.org/projects/project_display.cfm?ProjectID=11

 

One sign says it all: WHISKY. I guess that's what you "do" when your town is this dead. :(

 

The first sign of life along SR 725 when you travel west of Germantown is actually Liberty, Indiana, and it's Indiana Rt 44 there.

 

There is a scenic old road (It's old US 127) that meanders south of Camden down into Butler County, that is a great bicycle trip.

If cleaned up a bit, it'd look like New Hope, Pennsylvania.

 

yeah thats what it reminds me of too. very cute town with potential.

 

i've never heard of this place, but it's certainly better looking than the nj version.  :laugh:

 

Nice village, just needs more people.

Believe it or not, there's actually a great book about Camden. It's called "Main Street Blues: The Decline of Small-Town America." It traces the history of Camden, which it uses as a model for the problems of towns all over the country. Settlement, growth, relative self-sufficiency, the coming of the railroads, the lure of factory jobs in nearby big cities, being bypassed by highways, the loss of self-sufficiency, etc. It's by Richard O. Davies, a Camden native who's a history professor at University of Nevada, Reno. Believe it or not, he's not the first author from Camden. Sherwood Anderson also was born in Camden before his family moved to Clyde in north central Ohio -- the model for "Winesburg, Ohio."

No one's done Clyde yet...

^Clyde is on the main page.

yeah try threads on these places in order if you want to follow after sherwood anderson's colorful life: camden, clyde, springfield, elyria & cleveland. he was quite the uber-ohioan in his early life.

 

wiki sez he later moved to chicago & new orleans, but whoa check out how he died, what a way to go!  :-o

 

"He died in Panama of peritonitis after accidentally swallowing a piece of a toothpick embedded in a martini olive at a party, aged 64. Sherwood Anderson was buried at Round Hill Cemetery in Marion, Virginia. His epitaph reads, 'Life Not Death is the Great Adventure'. Anderson's final home, known as Ripshin, still stands in Troutdale, Virginia, and may be toured by appointment."

 

 

I guess there's more to Camden than I remembered.  Just a little TLC could make a huge impact.

 

Ack!!! Someone help that house in the background!

I passed through Camden a couple weeks ago, but not in my own car or on a picture tour, and also was struck by the the above sad house with wonderful potential.

Yikes!  I grew up on a farm outside of Camden; went to high school in Camden; piano lessons from Mr. Pottinger in Camden and dare I say that grey and rundown house looked then as it does now.  Wasn't much to do in Camden except go the the Depot (2 blocks or so to the right of the grey house) and eat cheese burgers.

Interesting little hamlet.

Wysong Gravel Co. just outside Camden

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikesma/358191943/" title="A toothless grin by ~Jana~, on Flickr"></a>