(crickets chirping) - [Narrator] Summer, 1917.

The fertile plain in the shadow of the Mount Logan Range in South Central Ohio is abuzz with activity.

(tools clattering) The United States military is scrambling to establish training camps around the country to prepare its soldiers for World War I.

(solemn music) In the months to follow, the population of the small town just south of this camp will nearly quadruple in size and forge a lasting connection between community and encampment.

This isn't the first time this landscape has been dramatically altered.

(dramatic music) Soldiers here train atop earthworks thousands of years old, created by a mysterious prehistoric culture that left behind few clues about their identity.

Centuries after the mound builders, the Shawnee will settle this same tract of land.

(fire crackling) (solemn music) The Shawnee named their principal towns Chalahgawtha, a word that would soon find itself anglicized as American settlers racing into the newly-formed Ohio territory sought to establish a principal settlement of their own.

Recognizing the value and potential of this area, that principal town was founded in 1796 and named Chillicothe.

- Support for "Our Town: Chillicothe" comes from Adena Health System, serving the healthcare needs of South Central and Southern Ohio for over 125 years.

driven by a mission of "called to serve our communities."

Adena Mansion & Gardens, home to Ohio Statesman Thomas Worthington, featuring a museum and visitor center nestled in the hills of Southern Ohio in Ross County.

Christopher Inn & Suites, a boutique hotel and riverview conference center near historic downtown Chillicothe, along with Herrnstein Auto Group, locally owned and operated, and serving the Chillicothe community since 1945.

Ross County Banking Center, a banking family since 1867, where roots run deep and branches are strong, offering the latest banking technology with experienced community bankers.

Member FDIC.

Tecumseh Outdoor Drama in Chillicothe, providing a memorable experience for the entire family, and by the Ross Chillicothe Convention and Visitors Bureau, the source for Southern Ohio destinations, including 2,000-year-old historical sites, the great outdoors, and hospitality.

Additional support comes from the historic Majestic Theatre located in downtown Chillicothe, featuring a wide variety of entertainment.

McDonald's in Chillicothe, committed to the Chillicothe community since 1972, and the Ross County Commissioners.

(river burbling) (birds chirping) - [Narrator] This valley along the Scioto River and Paint Creek has long drawn settlers.

It's the place where the glaciers began to retreat and where the foothills of the Appalachians meet the glaciated plains.

- You have both hills that are almost mountains here, and then this wide open plain, and that's due to the Teays River valley.

It's a very ancient river that flowed the opposite way of the Scioto today.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Centuries before Alexander led the Greeks through Egypt, the Adena thrived along the banks of the Scioto.

Long before this was the site of training exercises for soldiers in World War I, these mounds were a sacred place for the land's native inhabitants.

- The Mound City Group is sort of the centerpiece of Hopewell Culture National Historical Park, and this place was, 2,000 years ago, a religious center of a Native American religious movement that really swept all across eastern North America.

- [Narrator] Both the Hopewell and the Adena people expressed their religious and cultural practices by building mounds, geometric earthworks, and earthen enclosures in their natural environment.

When the earthworks at Mound City were excavated by William Mills in the 1920s, many interesting artifacts and clues to their use were found, including altars and sacred objects from as far away as the area of Yellowstone in Wyoming.

- People really began to understand what had happened here, and what these mounds represent are shrine buildings.

We don't know what actually went on in these shrines.

While these buildings eventually had cremations in them and had all these sacred objects laid out, these shrines that eventually became mounds may have served all sorts of ritual purposes, including many things during life and not just after life.

- [Narrator] Historians don't have any written records or languages for the groups.

Hopewell and Adena are names that were given to these groups much later on by white settlers in the region.

While much more has been discovered about the mound builders over the years, so much too remains a mystery.

We know that, eventually, they stopped building these earthworks and moved into other places.

What happened to these groups that once called Chillicothe home?

- Tracing those historical connections is a difficult matter, but there are innumerable lines of continuity between the many Hopewell peoples that lived here and the many historic tribes, the Shawnee, Delaware, Miami, and others that lived in this area at the time of European contact.

(crickets chirping) (river burbling) - [Narrator] Over centuries, the Adena and Hopewell were replaced by new cultures, but the land and river remained a constant thread between them.

In the 18th century, the Shawnee once again made their home in the Ohio country.

They had been driven out of the area by the Iroquois during the Beaver Wars a generation prior.

When they returned, they established new communities throughout the region, naming their principal towns Chalahgawtha, a name that was used for many of their settlements, including one at the junction of Paint Creek and the Scioto.

In 1768, a child was born into the Kispoko band of Shawnee warriors.

His parents gave him the name Tecumseh, meaning shooting star.

When he was just six years old, his father Puckeshinwa died fighting colonists at the Battle of Point Pleasant in modern day West Virginia.

The boy was then raised by his elder brother, Cheeseekau, himself a legendary chief who would suffer the same fate as their father, dying at the hands of Americans in 1792.

With his father and brother dead, young Tecumseh joined the legendary Shawnee warrior chief Blue Jacket in armed resistance to the American invaders who had killed his family and who now threatened the very existence of the Shawnee people.

When the American Revolution broke out, many Shawnee allied themselves with the British and launched raids into Kentucky, hoping to drive out the colonial invaders.

When the war ended, the newly-formed American government did not forget, nor did they forgive the Shawnee for siding with the Crown.

In 1787, Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance, creating the Northwest Territory.

The ordinance outlined a plan to make new states from the vast wilderness north and west of the Ohio River.

The Americans and native tribes were thrust into conflict once more.

(horses neighing) (gunshots banging) The Shawnee continued their alliance with the British, who promised to help them defend their homelands from the invading Americans.

Years of bitter warfare culminated at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in Northwestern Ohio in 1794.

(gunshot bangs) The Treaty of Greenville, signed in 1795, was to remove all Native Americans from Ohio once and for all.

(solemn music) With the land cleared of hostile natives, the flood gates opened and thousands of American settlers poured into the Ohio country.

Among those settlers was a young Virginian named Nathaniel Massie, who worked as a surveyor and gained his own property as well in the Northwest Territory's newly-formed Virginia Military District, a vast area of land including the Scioto Valley, which was given to revolutionary veterans after the war.

- Nathaniel Massie laid out Chillicothe.

He actually owned all of the city.

Today, you'd call him a land developer, and he ran literally advertising to promote his new town.

Originally, it was known as Massie's Town, but he chose the word Chillicothe to give it the name that we now have today.

(upbeat folk music) - [Narrator] Massie's Town was an immediate success.

Its position on the Scioto allowed agricultural products from the nearby plains to reach distant ports along the Ohio and Mississippi.

The growing village would soon boast a newspaper, the Centinel of the Northwest Territory, founded in 1793.

The paper still operates today as the Chillicothe Gazette, the oldest newspaper in Ohio.

In 1796, Ebenezer Zane and his sons constructed Zane's Trace, one of the frontier's first roads.

It wound from Wheeling, West Virginia to Maysville, Kentucky, passing through Chillicothe along the way.

With travel on the river and a road accessible by wagon.

Chillicothe soon became Central Ohio's most important settlement, and even more settlers arrived.

One of those new arrivals was a young surveyor from Virginia by the name of Thomas Worthington.

Orphaned as a young boy, he had been raised by a family friend, Colonel Darke, who had received land in the new Northwest Territory in exchange for his military service.

- Colonel Darke could not make the trip here to survey his own land or to have his own land surveyed, so he sent Thomas Worthington.

He came, surveyed the land, and liked it so much that he ended up purchasing some land.

- [Narrator] Not long after, Thomas Worthington was appointed to the position of surveyor of the Northwest Territory, and was soon joined in Chillicothe by his brother-in-law, Edward Tiffin.

Seizing upon his new position and influence, Worthington became involved in the political workings of the new town and territory.

- He started lobbying for statehood.

Your population had to be so large before you could declare statehood, so Arthur St. Clair wanted to split us with Marietta and Cincinnati being the capitals, so it would take longer.

- [Narrator] Arthur St. Clair, governor of the Northwest Territory, was determined to hold onto his own power, and the longer it took for Ohio to become a state, the longer he would remain in his position.

St. Clair was also a Federalist and a rival to the developing group of Democratic Republicans in Chillicothe and their newly-elected president, Thomas Jefferson.

After lobbying from Worthington and others, Jefferson supported the Enabling Act of 1802, which made Ohio the 17th state in the union.

The act also made Chillicothe Ohio's capital, and it made Thomas Worthington a politician.

- When that happened, Edward Tiffin was appointed governor.

Thomas Worthington was appointed one of the first two state senators, so that was a big deal.

So that was the start of his political career.

- The corner of Paint and Main Street, that was set aside for the courthouse.

That's where the original state house for the first capitol was erected.

It was completed in 1803, the same year we became the 17th state.

- [Narrator] Worthington would head to Washington, D.C. to represent Ohio in the Senate, but would make his home in Chillicothe up on the hill on land that had originally belonged to Colonel Darke.

His home was designed by Benjamin Latrobe, the famed architect who had directed the US Capitol construction, among other projects.

- He ended up starting construction of the mansion in 1806, but they actually built a structured home, and that was called Belle View, and then that's the house that they lived in when we became a state.

This is where Ohio history began.

They wrote the constitution in Belle View, in front of the mansion, came out, and saw the sun coming up over the Mount Logan range.

- [Narrator] That morning's sunrise can still be seen today as the backdrop for Ohio's state seal.

(gentle folk music) Originally, Worthington's estate was to be called Mount Prospect, but he later changed it to Adena, a word taken from Hebrew meaning delicate, soft, delightful, or luxurious.

(solemn music) Located on the Adena estate was an ancient mound measuring 26 feet high.

It was later excavated in 1901 and became the type site excavation for the native culture known today as the Adena.

- Excavated at that Adena mound was the very famous Adena pipe, which is the Ohio state artifact.

It's a tubular pipe, but it's carved masterfully, carved in the form of a human.

It was used as a tobacco smoking pipe, and tobacco, you know, wasn't used just casually or recreationally by these people.

Tobacco was a religious sacrament, so tobacco smoking pipes are one of the sort of hallmarks of Adena and Hopewell culture.

That particular pipe is just a masterwork.

(solemn music) (foreboding music) - [Narrator] Worthington was but one of many important figures from the early statehood period from Chillicothe.

Men such as Duncan McArthur and Edward Tiffin served as governors, congressmen, senators, and sometimes all of the above while representing Ohio.

- Chillicothe becomes the first capital because of the influence of Worthington and the Virginians.

We get to that point where there's a political difference and there's a negotiation that goes on, so they wanna move the state capital to Zanesville, and they built a building very similar to the capitol building that was built here.

Now, it only lasted two years due to a new law that said you have to have the state capital in a spot that is central to the population of the state, and so they figured it out, and Columbus on the east side of the Scioto River was selected as the site.

- [Narrator] Thomas Worthington himself helped prepare the new state capitol grounds.

Worthington was a respected figure in many political and social circles.

He was instrumental in Ohio's early statehood and its politics on a national level, but also in relations with the Shawnee.

In 1807, Worthington hosted several leading Shawnee at his new home, Adena.

- Tecumseh and his other chiefs, they all came up here.

They went for a walk, Thomas Worthington and Tecumseh, and they were talking, and that is when he gave him the tomahawk and said that he would not raise his tomahawk to him in battle.

(solemn music) - [Narrator] By the time of that meeting, Tecumseh had become a central figure in the resistance to westward expansion by the Americans.

The defeat at Fallen Timbers, the founding of the Northwest Territory, and Ohio statehood had all pushed his people out, but Tecumseh and his brother Tenskwatawa, who came to be known as the Shawnee Prophet, persevered.

In 1808, Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa established Prophetstown, a village near present day Lafayette, Indiana that grew into a large multi-tribal community.

This confederacy would be a lasting legacy of Tecumseh, as the community continued to grow in numbers and tribal representation.

(gunfire banging) (soldiers shouting) The Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811 would see the destruction of Prophetstown by William Henry Harrison and the Americans, and when war between England and America broke out in 1812, Tecumseh joined his cause once again with the British.

- We were forcing them out.

We moved in on them.

They thought this was their land.

(gunshots banging) (soldiers shouting) - [Narrator] Later in the conflict, Tecumseh's forces once again faced Harrison at the Battle of the Thames.

On October 5th, 1813, in one of the war's turning points, Tecumseh was killed, and with him, the hopes of organized resistance from Native Americans passed as well.

- He is a man who had a vision and understood that there are big things in this world and in this life that you cannot accomplish on your own, that you need other people to come together with you.

You know that famous quote of his.

"A single twig is easily broken, but a bundle of twigs is strong."

(solemn music) - [Narrator] Tecumseh's legacy endures to this day at the Sugarloaf Mountain Amphitheater in Chillicothe, where the outdoor drama bearing his name has been drawing crowds every summer since its premiere in 1973.

- There's something about this story that I think speaks to everybody, this idea that community is more important than self.

I think, no matter what your background is, there's something about that that will speak to you.

- [Narrator] The War of 1812 would also bring Chillicothe its first of many military facilities, a simple stockade to hold British prisoners of war named Camp Bull.

(uplifting folk music) As the United States grew, so too did Chillicothe and Ohio, and with an increasing population, the state became more connected to the outside world.

Farms and businesses sprang up all throughout the valley, but with only primitive roads, getting the region's goods and products to distant markets was a monumental task.

To help with the region's commerce, construction of the Ohio and Erie Canal began in 1825, eventually creating a navigable waterway from Lake Erie at Cleveland to the Ohio River at Portsmouth.

- It comes to Chillicothe roughly 1831.

That makes Chillicothe a port city.

While we were a big agricultural state, it was hard for the farmers to get their product to market.

When the canal came, it meant that more of that product could not only go to market in its raw form, but it could also go in processed form, and so we had a big boom in flour mills.

(uplifting folk music) (uplifting folk music continues) - [Narrator] The path of the canal is familiar on the town's landscape today.

Originally, it came into Chillicothe from the south on what is now Canal Street, up through town onto Water Street, where it would border modern day Yoctangee Park, and eventually onto the current Yoctangee Parkway and the location of State Route 104.

These same paths were later followed for railroads and highways.

Ohio became a state founded on the rejection of slavery, but the United States of America's complicated relationship with the enslavement of human beings made it a central issue everywhere.

(solemn music) As a free state, Ohio would be home to many former enslaved people who had left the South and started a new life within its borders.

Some were born there, while others were forced to come, brought along with their masters to their new homes.

- It had to be psychologically shocking, because a good number of the people had been enslaved, and when they came, of course, to Ohio and to Chillicothe, slavery was not legal, so they were not legally enslaved, but, in many cases, they were still tied to their former masters.

- [Narrator] While they may have been considered free, Ohio's Black residents were required to be registered and pay a bond of $500, quite substantial for the time.

Despite these so-called Black Laws, the population of free Black residents in the Scioto Valley continued to grow.

Among them was David Nickens.

Born enslaved in Virginia in 1794, Nickens and his parents became free and moved to Chillicothe around 1806.

- His house was on what we now call 5th Street.

He was involved not only as someone who talked about ending slavery, but also who actually acted as a conductor and whose house was used as a station on the Underground Railroad.

- [Narrator] Nickens gathered with other community members and founded Chillicothe's Baptist church in 1824.

He then became the first Black ordained minister in Ohio.

Institutions like Nickens' church acted as a magnet, bringing other formerly enslaved people to the region.

Madison Hemings and his brother Eston were freed around 1827 in Virginia.

They left their plantation to live in the town of Charlottesville with their mother, Sally.

When she passed away in the late 1830s, the brothers moved to Chillicothe, where they purchased land.

Eston stayed for about 11 years before moving on to Wisconsin.

Madison stayed in the area until his death in 1877.

Their names appear in the records of the early Black communities in the Chillicothe area, and rumors of their father's identity were occasionally passed around.

- I was working on my own genealogy.

I think it was the 1870 census.

It had the families listed, and then in the margin of this one entry, it said, "This man is the son of Thomas Jefferson."

And I went, "What?

What is this?"

And I'm looking, you know, and going in, and it said Madison Hemings, and then we knew that, when he moved here, people knew who he was.

The story of Madison being Jefferson's child was apparent.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] In the mid-1800s, a movement began to create a colony of formerly enslaved people in Liberia on the west coast of Africa.

A young Black teacher in town would eventually become a part of that young nation's history.

- Edward Roye lived here in Chillicothe and he advertised for pupils, because the education at that time for people of color was, like, nothing.

He caught the message of the colonization folk and he became convinced that the only help, the only freedom that people of color were gonna get is if they did go to Africa, and he consented to to go.

Because he was educated, he was able to get involved in the government and actually became the fifth president of Liberia.

Unfortunately, and we think this was political, he was found dead of peculiar circumstances.

- [Narrator] The legacy of abolitionists, free Black communities, and national movements for freedom would have an impact on generations to come in Chillicothe.

Dr. James Webb was a white abolitionist who moved to Chillicothe to start his family and career because of the ban on slavery in Ohio.

On a visit to his family's homestead in Kentucky in 1833, he contracted cholera and passed away.

Dr. Webb died only a few years after the birth of his daughter, Lucy.

She would be raised by her mother and brothers and was known as a very intelligent and kind young woman.

When she was 13, the whole family moved briefly to Delaware, Ohio so her brothers could attend Ohio Wesleyan University.

The university did not accept female students, but allowed Lucy to take part in college preparatory classes.

It was around this time that Lucy Webb first met an older student named Rutherford Hayes.

The two would soon fall in love, but, first, Lucy would finish her college studies at Cincinnati Wesleyan, writing often on social issues.

- It is acknowledged by most persons that her mind is as strong as a man's.

Instead of being considered the slave of man, she is considered his equal in all things and his superior in some.

- [Narrator] After finishing her education, Lucy and Rutherford reunited for a two-year courtship before marrying in Cincinnati on December 30th, 1852.

The young couple settled in that same town, where Rutherford began his career as an attorney.

He would embrace the cause of outlawing slavery, becoming an abolitionist lawyer in Cincinnati, right across the Ohio River from the slave state of Kentucky.

The continued enslavement of Black people in the Southern United States was becoming the dominant issue of the time, pushing the United States itself to the brink of total collapse.

(gunshots banging) The first shot of the Civil War rang over Fort Sumter in April, 1861.

The 73rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry was organized in Chillicothe later that same year.

This unit marched with a band, including Richard Enderlin, a young drummer who came to the Scioto Valley from Germany only a year earlier.

Enderlin would travel with the 73rd throughout the conflict, and he would find himself at the most critical encounters of the Civil War.

- He's at the Battle of Gettysburg.

They've been fighting all day.

They retreat for the night.

They can hear those who are wounded out there, where the battle is taking place, and one in particular is George Nixon, who is from Vinton County.

They talk about who's gonna go out and save George, and nobody really volunteers, until Enderlin finally says, "I'll go."

He finds George, he pulls him up on his back, and he crawls 200 yards back.

Unfortunately, George was wounded too severely, and he died and he is buried there at Gettysburg.

- [Narrator] 106 years later, George Nixon's great-grandson Richard would become the 37th president of the United States.

As for Enderlin, his actions saw him promoted to sergeant the following day, and he later received the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Henry A. Walke of Chillicothe would make sure that the town would be represented in the Civil War's naval fighting too.

In 1862, the War Department commissioned a city-class, ironclad river gunboat by the name of USS Carondelet, with Walke as its captain.

The Carondelet, led by Walke, saw fighting at Fort Henry and Fort Donelson before being damaged heavily by a Confederate boat and forced from the action.

Walke was also a talented artist.

His work mainly focused on naval scenes as well as portraits.

Chillicothe had many direct ties to the Civil War.

The conflict's end also gave rise to the political career of Rutherford B. Hayes, and with it, his wife, Lucy Webb Hayes.

Growing up in an abolitionist family made an impact on the politics of Lucy, and those same strong anti-slavery beliefs impacted her husband too.

- Rutherford was a city solicitor of Cincinnati, and when hostilities broke out between the North and the South in 1861, he resigned that position and volunteered for military service.

He was appointed a major in the Ohio 23rd Voluntary Infantry, the unit with which he served the remainder of the war.

He suddenly rose to the rank of colonel, and by December, 1865, when he was mustered out of the military, he had achieved the rank of brigadier general.

- [Narrator] That military success would continue as Rutherford moved into politics.

He won election to the House of Representatives, followed by two stints as governor of Ohio, with Lucy as his first lady.

In the election of 1876, Hayes would be tapped to be the Republican nominee for the presidency.

The close election against Samuel Tilden was heavily contested, and after negotiations and much controversy, Hayes would win by one electoral vote, bringing not only the Ohioan into the White House, but a first lady from Chillicothe too.

- Everybody loved Lucy.

She was sweet and shy and intelligent, informed.

She knew what was going on.

She was definitely against alcohol, and one of the first declarations Rutherford made after he became president in 1877 was to prohibit any alcoholic drinks at White House functions.

- [Narrator] Rutherford B. Hayes would decline a second term, and he and Lucy would leave the White House in 1881 and return to their home at Spiegel Grove near Fremont, Ohio.

Lucy would pass away in 1889, leaving a rich legacy behind.

Her childhood home stands to this day as the Lucy Hayes Heritage Center on 6th Street in Chillicothe.

(gentle music) (upbeat folk music) The meteoric rise of transportation technology throughout the early 20th century not only connected the world in ways that had never been seen before.

It also gave rise to a new, fascinating hybrid of scientist and celebrity, the aviator.

One such aviator was Columbus-born teenage flying wonder, Cromwell Dixon.

Dixon was something of a boy wonder when it came to mechanics, and by the age of 15, he was designing, crafting, and flying his own airships.

During one such show in Chillicothe in 1910, Dixon crashed his airship into a fence while trying to land.

Dixon, being one part mechanical genius and one part vaudevillian, put out a call for a young boy from the crowd who could help him quickly repair his craft.

Against the wishes of his apprehensive mother, 10-year-old Freddie Myers volunteered.

While the two worked, the ropes attaching the craft to the balloons that allowed it flight caught in the branches of a tree, snapping them and releasing the balloon into the air with little Freddie Myers on it.

As Freddie rose over the heads of his neighbors, family, and friends for a stunning view of his bucolic hometown, Dixon and the rest of the crowd began a wild scurry after the boy and the balloon.

The chase went on for miles until the balloon began its slow descent over farmland outside of town.

Once the ground was about 10 feet beneath him, Freddie jumped safely off and began walking back to Chillicothe to be welcomed home with clamoring applause by his community.

The events would become an international news story.

Sadly, Dixon would pass away about a year later after becoming the first person to fly over the Continental Divide.

(lively music) The early 20th century would see the expansion of many different industries into Chillicothe.

The auto industry in particular found a home there, and, in 1903, the Logan Construction Company began making a relatively new machine, the automobile.

The company would continue to make cars until 1908 from their headquarters on Walnut Street in a building still standing today.

What might be the last remaining Logan automobile in the world can be found at the Ross County Historical Society, a beautiful 1906 Logan Model F Runabout made just down the street.

Not long after Logan ceased production, a father and son opened another automobile factory alongside the Scioto River in 1911.

Initially titled the Scioto Car Company, within only one year, it was changed to ArBenz, named after the duo Fred and Nand Arbenz.

Fred was the president of the company and his son was the chief designer.

The cars they produced were four cylinder, and were relatively inexpensive for the time.

This allowed more than just the wealthy to own cars.

The company would be purchased by an unsuccessful early competitor to General Motors in 1916, and the car would be phased out of production by 1918.

(river burbling) (gentle music) The Scioto River would bring so much to the community of Chillicothe, but the power of the mighty river would make itself known to the city many times over the years.

- In 1907, there is a flood that destroys a lot of the canal.

It just washes out the banks.

The canal itself that's sitting up high on Water Street, the side of it goes out and it flows down into the lake that's in the park.

The 1913 flood comes along, and, this time, a number of the creeks have been covered over and they run underground through the city, and the one in particular, the flood was so powerful, it literally caused the street to erupt and took away the fronts of all the buildings.

- [Narrator] As the water rushed through the town in March of 1913, Silas Pyle hopped on his boat.

Water, gas, and electricity were shot off for three days and all the railroads were blocked.

The only communication to the outside world was through one phone connecting to Cincinnati.

Silas Pyle was an expert boatsman and former bartender in the city.

When the flooding was at its worst, Pyle came across many others who needed his help.

After he rescued 25 people, a mother and baby were on board when his boat couldn't handle any more of the raging waters and capsized on Hickory Street.

The three were carried down the street as bystanders on rooftops desperately tried to help.

One of the refugees was able to hoist up the mother and baby with a blanket and bring them to safety.

Pyle, however, was able to grab onto a nearby awning on one of the storefronts, but lost his grip before he was able to be pulled up and continued floating down the street.

Another bystander tried to reach Pyle with the handle of a rake, but the running water carried him just out of reach.

(gentle music) After the water subsided, citizens of Chillicothe began the grizzly task of searching for the missing.

In all, 18 lost their lives in the flooding.

It was not until 2:00 p.m., Saturday, March 29th, four days after he was swept away by the rushing current, when Pyle's body was found.

Terrible flooding would strike a third of the town again in 1959.

Each disaster marks a time of devastation in the community and also shows the hope that can be found in working together to persevere.

The floods would not be the only agents of change shaping the landscape in Chillicothe in the early 20th century.

Something that would have a huge impact on the town and its future would happen as a result of events an ocean away.

(suspenseful music) (suspenseful music continues) The entrance of the United States of America into World War I would bring the global conflict directly to Chillicothe.

(lively music) - The war is declared in April, 1917, and there was a need for encampments around the country.

They actually lobbied to get the location.

There was land.

You know, there were all the things that were really needed, the pieces, 'cause it was close to 10,000 acres that make up Camp Sherman, so it was a significant amount of land that was necessary.

- [Narrator] Named for the Ohio Civil War hero William Tecumseh Sherman, the camp would be built just north of town by over 5,000 construction workers.

Nearly 2,000 structures would be built in only a few months' time.

It's estimated that a total of over 123,000 people came through Camp Sherman before the war's end in November, 1918.

At most times, it contained at least 30,000 men, much larger than the population of Chillicothe.

(lively music) Life would carry on like any other city too.

The soldiers would play basketball, music, gather for meals, and socialize.

Star boxer Johnny Kilbane would be brought in to serve the purposes of raising spirits and training the men in hand-to-hand combat.

21,000 officers and soldiers would even get together to create a giant manmade image of beloved American President Woodrow Wilson on Camp Sherman's grounds.

Even with all those activities, homesickness would still find its way to the camps, so it was often small acts that would go a long way, streets near barracks named for the towns that the soldiers came from, or occasionally a larger action, a cause taken up by one person like Chillicothe's Burton Egbert Stevenson.

Stevenson had become the director of the Chillicothe Library in 1899.

- As soon as World War I started, he was thinking, "What's something I can do to really help with this camp and give to the effort?"

He was already too old to be a soldier, so he came up with the idea of the library.

So he actually started a campaign, a national campaign, and brought in over 40,000 donated books.

So, there were 22 different locations, many libraries across the Camp Sherman campus, which is a huge campus.

The main library, the building, is the only building that's left from that original camp.

He wanted to make sure that every soldier at that camp had a newspaper from his town, so every town that was represented by a soldier also had a local newspaper so people could keep up with what was going on at home.

- [Narrator] Word of Stevenson's expansive library collection soon spread throughout the country and he began to gain national attention.

- Congress and the American Library Association heard about this.

The librarian of Congress actually came to Chillicothe, saw it, thought it was a great idea, and invited Stevenson to go to Paris to open the American Library in Paris.

- [Narrator] Stevenson would run the libraries in both Paris and Chillicothe for many years, all the while continuing the prolific writing and publishing of his own literary work.

- All this time, he was writing novels and publishing a lot of fiction that was popular at the time, common tropes that we still read about today.

There was a book about a vampire and there was a book about cursed Egyptian tombs.

He was writing things that a modern audience would still be familiar with.

As a librarian, he was collecting quotes, and everyone's heard of the Bartlett book of quotations.

Well, there was also the Stevenson book of quotations, which was just as popular as the Bartlett book at the time.

- [Narrator] Burton Stevenson had an incredible career, writing over 50 books, including at least one adapted into a movie, and he served as the director of the Chillicothe Library the whole time for 58 years.

(gentle music) (marching footsteps thumping) Back at Camp Sherman, where Stevenson first gained notice, soldiers began to pour in by the thousands for training.

The huge encampment those men found when they arrived contained an important tie to the past, a connection to the landscape in plain sight to Ohio's earlier inhabitants.

(solemn music) The Black soldiers of the 325th found themselves standing on the sacred mounds of the Indigenous people of Chillicothe.

- This represents a part of Camp Sherman where some of the few Black African American troops were quartered.

The mounds were simply in the way of building things, and their construction methods were for rapid construction of these barracks, and it was a standard form that they were doing all over the United States.

They just had post structures as opposed to building basements or foundations, so that avoided damaging these things, but in some cases, they avoided the mounds because they were physically in the way.

- The 325th, they were the only Black signal corp regiment in World War I, and they are comprised of soldiers from around the country.

There were folks there from Oklahoma and Georgia and Virginia, lots of guys from Ohio.

They were considered to be an elite group of soldiers.

They were highly educated.

This is a unit that comes out of Chillicothe.

There's a lot of pride here, and it should be.

- Lieutenant Charles Jackson, originally born in Rendville, Ohio in rural Perry County, would become one of only three Black officers that trained at Camp Sherman.

He eventually joined the 370th, a unit in the Illinois National Guard.

Jackson would eventually find himself in the 93rd, fighting under the command of French forces until the final moments of the war, November 11th, 1918.

His unit would receive the esteemed Croix de Guerre for their valor.

- The need for manpower, it was both Black and white soldiers.

In the fall of 1918, you know, you've got almost 8,000 Black soldiers training at Camp Sherman.

It was a segregated army.

We see this obviously up through World War II.

I never had the privilege of talking to a World War I soldier, but my students and I interviewed a number of African American World War II soldiers, and I will tell you, two things stuck out, pride in their service, and a real frustration with being treated as second-class citizens.

- [Narrator] It's a reoccurring theme in American history, people of color fighting for this country and the freedom of its people, only to see themselves denied those same freedoms.

(gentle music) It wasn't only the war that brought death to the soldiers at Camp Sherman.

A pandemic involving a highly contagious virus was running rampant at the same time.

Influenza was ravaging the American forces faster and at a much more alarming rate than they were being killed by their enemies at the front, with as many as 12 soldiers lost to disease for every one in battle.

Many men would contract the flu in close, cramped quarters of places like Camp Sherman.

As the flu pandemic ravaged the young soldiers along with the war itself, it was a devastating time for Chillicothe.

(gentle music) The massive amount of land that Camp Sherman had been on would play into the future of Chillicothe after World War I was over.

Still under lease to the federal government, it became the perfect location for a new project.

The land around the Camp Sherman hospital would receive funding from the United States government and President Warren G. Harding to become a veterans' hospital.

It opened in June of 1924 as the Chillicothe VA and still operates today as a crucial piece in taking care of the veterans of this country.

(gentle music) On that same tract of federal land that once trained the soldiers of World War I, two prisons would also eventually be built.

The Chillicothe Correctional Institution once held Charles Manson briefly earlier in his life in 1952.

In 1989, country singer Johnny Paycheck spent 22 months there after being convicted of a shooting in Hillsboro.

Born in nearby Greenfield, Paycheck would bring his good friend, the legendary Merle Haggard, to the prison for a concert.

(peaceful folk music) Another company whose story is tied with this city originally began in 1846 in Dayton, Ohio.

Colonel Daniel Mead founded a paper business with partners and the business grew over the course of several decades.

Mead bought out the others slowly, and, in 1882, was reincorporated as the Mead Paper Company.

Mead upgraded his original Dayton mill, and around the same time in 1890, he was passing through Chillicothe via train when he noticed the city's own paper mill.

- And he said, "I think I'll buy it," and he did.

Mead becomes a major industry here in the city, and there was another company called Chillicothe Paper Company, sometimes known as Chilpaco, which was across the road, that eventually is bought up and becomes part of Mead.

- [Narrator] The company would grow in size and notoriety as the century moved along.

Mead acted as one of the city's largest employers and grew as it purchased smaller companies as well, but, in 2002, it would combine with the huge company Westvaco to create MeadWestvaco.

They would sell off their paper business, plants, and timber in 2005 and continue to change hands.

Currently, Pixelle operates its paper business out of the longtime plant on the city's south end.

(peaceful folk music) Much like those companies carrying on the city's paper mill traditions, the early automobile companies making the Logan and the Arbenz were not the only vehicles that would be made here in Chillicothe.

In 1974, the successful, longtime semi-truck manufacturer Kenworth would open a huge plant in Chillicothe.

They have designed commercial trucks for most purposes and places you can think of, even one time doing a custom truck for the famous country band Alabama.

Almost 50 years later, that plant remains in the community, and, in 2019, broke ground on a cutting-edge new facility next door to its current location.

(peaceful folk music) (upbeat folk music) - This community has done a really good job of preserving.

I think that is something that's almost embedded in the culture here, is an awareness and a consideration that that history should be preserved.

When you step away and kind of look back and say, "Oh, man, that's pretty cool," and then that's when you really start to become interested in history yourself, I think, right?

It's not being taught to you, it's not forced in a book, but you get the opportunity to explore some yourself, and I think that this community does a good job of making that information available, preserving it, protecting it, and also sharing it with people who visit.

- I don't think it was an accident that, when Nathaniel Massie in 1796 established his community here, he intended this community to be a principal town.

- It's so rich in experience.

It's so rich in the past.

It's so rich in what it can be.

- Just layers and layers of history and of people making their mark on this landscape that stretch back thousands of years.

- We have such a history-rich community.

We still have so many of the houses and buildings and stories and even people who still can tell those stories, and that's a big part of what makes Chillicothe so great.

- It's really the history that's here.

You can't rebuild that.

You can't insure that history.

You just have to hold onto it.

- Chillicothians are proud of their area because it's very rich with history.

There's so many historical places here, and even if you're not interested in history, just coming here for a small little town, we've got it going on.

(bright music) (bright music continues) (bright music continues) (bright music continues) (bright music continues) (bright music continues) - Support for "Our Town: Chillicothe" comes from Adena Health System, serving the healthcare needs of South Central and Southern Ohio for over 125 years, driven by a mission of "called to serve our communities."

Adena Mansion & Gardens, home to Ohio Statesman Thomas Worthington, featuring a museum and visitor center nestled in the hills of Southern Ohio in Ross County.

Christopher Inn & Suites, a boutique hotel and riverview conference center near historic downtown Chillicothe, along with Herrnstein Auto Group, locally owned and operated, and serving the Chillicothe community since 1945.

Ross County Banking Center, a banking family since 1867, where roots run deep and branches are strong, offering the latest banking technology with experienced community bankers.

Member FDIC.

Tecumseh Outdoor Drama in Chillicothe, providing a memorable experience for the entire family, and by the Ross Chillicothe Convention and Visitors Bureau, the source for Southern Ohio destinations, including 2,000-year-old historical sites, the great outdoors, and hospitality.

Additional support comes from the historic Majestic Theatre located in downtown Chillicothe, featuring a wide variety of entertainment.

McDonald's in Chillicothe, committed to the Chillicothe community since 1972, and the Ross County Commissioners.