Celina, Ohio - December 6, 2006

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All photos © 2006 Robert E Pence

In 1986 the Celina Rotary Club donated the lighthouse that stands at the western end of Grand Lake St. Marys, along US 127 south of downtown.

Nine miles long and almost three miles wide, the 13,500 acre man-made lake was created to provide feedwater for the Miami-Erie Canal that connected Lake Erie with the Ohio River. Eight years of labor by 1,700 workers created the lake, and until the construction of Lake Meade and Hoover Dam in Nevada, it was the largest man-made lake in the world. During the 1890s oil boom, there were numerous oil derricks in the lake.

The coal-fired municipal power plant is being dismantled.

Downtown has a nice set of 19th and early 20th century buildings.

The 1923 Mercer County Courthouse was designed by Dutch-born and -trained Lima architect Peter M. Hulsken, who also designed Lima's Memorial Hall and other buildings and Bellefontaine's Holland Theater. The imposing limestone building has an unexpectedly elaborate interior featuring abundant Vermont Marble in the rotunda walls, staircases, and even railings and balusters.

Catholic Churches seem to be the largest buildings in many towns in this part of Ohio. Immaculate Conception Catholic Church is part of the Cincinnati Archdiocese. The building was erected in 1903 and renovated in 2003.

Mersman originated in Ottoville in 1876, moved to Celina in the early 1900s, and closed in the early 1990s. At one time the company claimed that it had produced one in every ten tables in use in American homes. I have a square Mersman 5-leg table that was in the farmhouse south of Bluffton when my family moved there in 1947.

The loss of Mersman and more recently Huffy have hit working people hard in Celina.

Grain terminals and elevators are an essential component of midwestern towns.

A severed rail freight connection.

After exploring the side streets, one last pass through downtown on the way back to my car:

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