Not much to talk about tonight...

I just got done listing some Waymarks. I've slacked off about that lately it seems. I'm not sure if it's the nice weather or what, but I've just not felt like sitting down to research, type up, and post Waymarks the past couple of weeks. Regardless I posted 3 antique stores, an AM/FM Broadcast station, a courthouse, and 7 National Register of Historic Places places...one of those I've saved to submit later since I realized that the actual Register title included 3 buildings instead of just the one that I took pictures of, so I need to return to get a few more pictures. I still have about 10-15 National Register places in my backlog along with a ton of other stuff.

I was thinking about heading out to Mechanicsburg for the dedication of an Ohio Historic Marker there, but I didn't end up doing that. I really only wanted to go because I had looked very hard for it to Waymark it. It was listed on the remarkableohio.com site for a while, and it's dated 2006, but I found out that they never had a dedication ceremony, therefore it was never there until today. I knew where it should be, but I kept driving all around the town thinking that maybe the website had its location listed wrong (they've been known to do that) or something...I just never considered that it hadn't been erected yet. Oh well, I'll get out there one of these days to mark it. I am planning to go to another Marker dedication up in Marion next weekend. I grew up in Marion county and spent a lot of time in Marion, so its history is interesting to me. This particular marker is one recalling the history of a WWII German POW camp that was located where the present day Marion Industrial Depot is. You can read the marker's text here. It's pretty interesting stuff that most folks from the area aren't aware of, even though it's relatively recent history.

Something that this marker doesn't mention is some even more recent issues with the former POW camp. Near the eastern end of where that camp was, and where the Marion Engineer Depot was sits the former River Valley High school. Back in the late 1990's there was a link to leukemia cases and graduates of River Valley High School. It seems someone noticed they were developing the disease at a higher rate than other residents of Marion and Marion county. The school was closed and a new school was built a mile or two away. The EPA and various other organizations have been testing the air, soil, and everything else around there but releasing little information to the public (I need to check whether this is listed as a super fund site or not.....). One thing they did find was an area of the school yard where a rail line used to come into the POW camp. They found high levels of Arsenic in core samples taken there. It was later determined that the rail was used to import people into the camp. When they got off the trains they were sprayed right on the spot with a delousing agent. That agent contained Arsenic, and is what they were finding in the soil some 50 years later.