Travel 231 mile today
Sixteen Sided
Barn
The sixteen sided barn is located on
75540
Skullfork Drive outside of Freeport. The two-story barn is the only one of
its kind in Ohio and only one of three in the United States and Canada. It
was completed in 1924, and measures 60' high by 60' across. It is
privately owned and operated by Oliver and Judy Workley. Visitors are
welcome. The
barn received a new roof and
fresh paint in 2008.
It is privately
owned and operated by Oliver and Judy Workley.
Visitors are welcome with or without prior notice at
740-658-3891.
Harrison County Courthouse
Cadiz, Ohio
The Harrison County Courthouse in
Cadiz, Ohio was
constructed during 1893 to 1895 by
Joseph W. Yost. The
courthouse mirrors others of his design, with large arched windows,
mansard-roofed towers and a central clock tower domed and topped with a statue
Justice. The porches to the entrances are covered with a balcony.
After the building was constructed, a mechanic's lien was filed by the Greer
family to prevent the county from taking possession of the property. The issue
was finally resolved and the county officials moved in.
Like other courthouses, the Harrison County courthouse fell into disrepair.
In 1993, the courthouse saw renovations of the premises, including an elevator,
replacement of the roof, dome, and stairs, as well as other much needed repairs.
http://clarkgablefoundation.com/main.html
 |
|
|
Tour Info
Visit rooms identical to
those in which Clark Gable was born February 1, 1901.The
birthplace home is furnished in the style of the day,
including several of The King's belongings, such as his
boyhood sled. Then check out one of Gable's actual
automobiles, a classic 1954 Cadillac! Our well informed
staff also on hand to answer most any of your Gable related
questions. If you are an ardent Gable fan then these humble
beginnings of the King of Hollywood are a must see!
Tuesday through Saturday - 10 a.m. till 4 p.m.
Sunday 1:30 p.m. till 4 p.m.
$5.50 per person
Seniors $4.75
Children $3.00
Groups of 10 or more $3.50 per person
|
The Clark Gable Foundation
Origins and Aspirations
On February 1, 1983 a radio disc jockey from
Quincey, Ill. called the United States Post Office in the small Eastern Ohio
town of Cadiz. The question to postman Pat Frazier was, "Do you know whose
birthday it is today?"
Pat answered honestly that he did not and was
informed by the deejay that Feb. 1 was Clark Gable's birthday! He then asked
what Cadiz, Ohio was doing to commemorate the birth of its most famous son.
That was the last time "nothing" was the answer.
The following year a local women's organization,
DISTAFF, organized the first annual "Clark Gable Birthday Celebration," held
Feb. 1, 1985. Despite a terrible ice storm the day before, the party was a
smashing success with over three-hundred townspeople and devoted fans in
attendance.
The 1985 celebration was the first organized
attempt to commemorate Gable's hometown connection. However, some time prior to
that a group of local citizens concerned with the terrible economic slump
enveloping the town and county, met to discuss tourism. Cadiz, once known as
"The Proudest Small Town in America" because of its many famous sons including
Gen. George Armstrong Custer, was highly dependent on the bituminous coal
industry.
In the late 1970s due to a softening demand for
ecologically polluting high sulfur coal, the mines began to close. At one point
in 1985 the unemployment rate for Harrison County reached over 25%! The town
experienced all the social problems that occur with high unemployment and
population loss.
Some were convinced that the tourism potential of
its beautiful topography, historical figures and strategic location near several
major population centers was ripe for development. They were also quite
embarrassed that no memorial to Clark Gable existed in his hometown. In fact
they couldn't even point out the house in which he was born. That house on
Charleston Street in Cadiz was razed in the early 1960s.
Three business and professional men from Cadiz,
Mike Cope, Jon Kirkland, and Chuck Peterson were friends and concerned about the
decline of the community. Meeting informally one evening in 1984 they dreamed of
an organization dedicated to preserving Gable's memory. They believed this would
spur tourism interest in Cadiz and Harrison County and they set about forming
what Jon thought should be called "The Clark Gable Foundation."
Not long after that other members were enlisted.
The group's first goal was to erect a monument on
the site of his birth. With this in mind and through the cooperation of the
Worley family who owned an interest in the land on which the house once stood,
the Foundation was granted an interest in the property.
In a few months, over seven-thousand dollars was
raised locally and Saturday Feb. 1, 1986 with great expectation and national
media attention, the monument was dedicated!
The following year the Foundation assumed the
birthday celebration from DISTAFF and the momentum began. Since then it has
hosted thirteen birthday celebrations and three "barbecues."
In December 1988 the Foundation was able to make
contact with Mr. Fred Crane who accepted an invitation to attend the next
Birthday Celebration Feb. 4, 1989. Fred played Brent Tarleton in Gone With The
Wind. That contact with Fred and Anita Crane opened the door to its "California
Connection" including Mr. Bill Tomkin who had worked for many years at MGM
Studios in the film archives department. These people helped us make contact
with other members of the GWTW cast which made Foundation events even more
successful. The next event was "The Twelve Oaks Barbecue" in June 1989
commemorating the 50th Anniversary of Gone With The Wind. The Foundation was
able to host four of the original cast members including Cammie King, Butterfly
McQueen, Patrick Curtis, and Mr. Daniel Selznick, son of legendary director
David O. Selznick. Since then the Foundation has invited celebrities from
Gable's films to attend as guests of honor for each of its "Birthday
Celebration" held the Saturday nearest his birthday, annually. In 1991 the
guests were Gable's only son John and his stepdaughter Joan Spreckels. In 1992
the guests were Ann Rutherford and Rand Brooks, the actress and actor who played
Careen O'Hara and Charles Hamilton in GWTW.
The next event was "The Twelve Oaks Barbecue" in
June 1989 commemorating the 50th Anniversary of Gone With The Wind. The
Foundation was able to host four of the original cast members including Cammie
King, Butterfly McQueen, Patrick Curtis, and Mr. Daniel Selznick, son of
legendary director David O. Selznick. Since then the Foundation has invited
celebrities from Gable's films to attend as guests of honor for each of its
"Birthday Celebration" held the Saturday nearest his birthday, annually
In 1991, the nonprofit Clark Gable Foundation
received a sizable bequest from a local woman's estate. Isabelle Clifford was a
Gable contemporary and lived just down the street from the house where he was
born. She loved her hometown and was proud of its history. Her generosity and
forward thinking gave the Foundation the seed money so essential to reach its
goal.
On Jan. 31, 1998, the Foundation hosted another
dedication. On that Saturday Mr. John Clark Gable stood on the front porch of
the reconstructed birthplace! He said, " I can't believe its finally built. I'm
just ecstatic!" He then cut the ribbon and entered the house, to see the second
floor bedroom in which the man he never knew was born.
The Foundation recognizes the continuing national
fascination with Clark Gable and his films. Time-Warner/ Turner Entertainment
owns the rights to most Gable's 67 talking pictures. He and his legacy will be
constantly renewed with each viewing of classics like It Happened One Night, San
Francisco, Call of the Wild, and the greatest motion picture ever made the
immortal Gone With The Wind !" Through his motion pictures, his heritage can be
preserved and enhanced by concentrating that history in Cadiz, Ohio, for all to
view, learn, and enjoy!
Turner Entertainment though its chief operating
officer, Mr. Roger Mayer, has agreed to provided stills and films for the
Foundations use at the house! Soon a photographic display of his cinematic
triumphs will grace the walls of the house in which he was born.
How fitting that the man who died nearly 40 years
ago is even today helping his home town! Undoubtedly that reflects the reality
of the man....Clark Gable. His success in large part came because he was real.
He personified the image that America and Americans believed was theirs. He was
a "man's man" and though at times a bully, always real and compassionate. He was
the "King of Hollywood" and unlike many of the icons before and after, his image
has never been tarnished and he never disappointed his fans.
It was very fortunate for tiny Cadiz, Ohio, the American Film Industry,
and America itself that William Clark Gable was born Feb. 1, 1901 on Charleston
Street
West Virginia State Penitentiary Tour
Moundsville,
West Virginia
West Virginia State Penitentiary Tour
- Address:
- 818 Jefferson Ave., Moundsville, WV
- Directions:
- On the south side of Moundsville, at the corner of 8th St. and
Jefferson Ave. Jefferson is a couple of blocks east of Hwy 2.
- Hours:
- Apr-Nov T-Su 10-4. There's no heat, so it's too cold for tours
in the winter. (Call to verify)
- Phone:
- 304-845-6200
Tours start at 11am Tuesday through Sunday
The last tour leaves at 4pm
ADMISSION:
Adults: $10.00
Seniors: $8.00
The West Virginia State Penitentiary sprawls across 11 acres. The
prisoners built it, heavy rock by heavy rock, beginning in 1866. When you
watch someone sentenced to "hard labor" in a movie, this place is what the
judge had in mind.
That approach to justice lasted until the mid-1980s, when the West
Virginia Supreme Court ruled that the prison's 5x7 foot cells were cruel and
unusual punishment -- particularly because two or more convicts were often
crammed into them. It was the beginning of the end for the prison as a
prison. The WV State Pen closed in 1995.
Tom Stiles, WV Pen tour guide.
Now the penitentiary is open again -- as a tourist attraction. It also
occasionally stages mock prison riots (for guard training), and hosts a
surprisingly popular sleepover "ghost hunt" once a month, where people spend
the night in the empty, unlit buildings.
Our guide, Tom, loves his job. He can easily stretch the standard
45-minute tour into one twice that length, peppered with stories of prison
riots and revenge murders and of how the inmates in North Hall -- known as
"The Alamo" -- would hurl urine and vomit onto the guards.
For such a vast, empty place, the prison is loud -- concrete and steel
don't muffle sound. It's clean but ugly, even if some prisoners did try to
spruce the place up a bit. We notice a framed painting on the wall depicting
the world's longest single arch steel span bridge (which is downstate in
Fayetteville). "Danny Lehman painted that," Tom tells us. "He got stabbed
through the eye in North Hall. Punctured his brain."
Indian Mound display created by a prisoner.
Another prisoner, a "trustie," built a lifelike life-size Indian family
out of paper-mache for an exhibit at the big Indian Burial Mound Museum
across the street. It looks great, but it was rejected because some
Christians complained about the nearly-nude Indians. Now it's on display in
the old cafeteria. "This cafeteria triggered the prison's last major riot,"
Tom tells us. The governor ended the standoff by striking a deal: 16
hostages for a new cafeteria with heating and air conditioning -- the only
building in the whole prison that would ever have such luxuries.
Our tour continues, past the "protective custody" yard where the rapists,
child molesters, "rats," and "snitches" would exercise; past the "old man
colony" (you had to be at least 65 and in poor health to live in it), past
the open-air toilets that used to be enclosed -- until an inmate was beaten
in it. The warden ordered the outer walls knocked down as a punishment.
Tom takes us back to the Wagon Gate, the oldest part of the prison. This
is where he likes to stop the tour, pull an inconspicuous lever, and watch
the visitors scream in horror as a dummy drops through an overhead trap
door, swinging by its neck from a noose. 85 men were executed by hanging at
the prison -- a public spectacle until one was accidentally decapitated.
From 1949 on, "Old Sparkie" the electric chair took over.
Tom shows us The Wheel House in the administration building, a revolving
door with iron bars instead of glass, which separated the Warden and his
family -- who by law had to live at the prison -- from the inmates (The law
was finally abolished in 1959.) .
Revolving entryway to the Warden's Family quarters.
We then enter North Hall, where the "bad, bad guys" were housed,
according to Tom. This is a classic prison nightmare -- a human warehouse
where the men would freeze in the winter and broil in the summer -- tier
after tier of tiny cells stacked to the lofty ceiling, open-air showers on
the concrete floor, prisoners fed through slots in the cell doors called
"the bean hole." Tom tells us that he likes to lock his tour members in
cells, then let everyone out except the most skittish person. "When
everybody else's cell opens up and theirs doesn't, they really do freak
out."
We wind our way through several more cell blocks (the prison has ten) and
yards and end the tour at the small prison museum, a fake-wood-paneled room
that somehow seems more creepy than the rest of the penitentiary. Here is a
display of confiscated hand-made weapons, a replica death cell, and a
hand-written letter from Charles Manson, requesting a transfer to West
Virginia. (It was denied.)
Here, too, is "Old Sparkie," built by a prisoner in 1950, and for which
he had to be moved to another prison in order to prevent his being killed.
You can't sit in it, although Tom admits that people always ask to. Above
the chair is a glass-fronted box holding the leather bag that was dropped
over the condemned prisoner's head. It wasn't just for privacy. "The
electricity would go down through the head," Tom explains, "and then exit
the cavities of the face: the eyes, mouth, nose, and ears. It was gross to
see."
Tom may enjoy his work, but he can't understand people who leave here
thinking that they could handle life in a place like the West Virginia State
Penitentiary. "You get people who think that, 'Oh, I could live like that',"
he says. "Yeah, you could live like that for 90 minutes while you're with
me. But you try it for 20 years and see if you can live like that."
West Virginia Penitentiary Maps
Below are detailed maps of the prison layout. You can print these out to
help you when you go on your Ghost Hunt - Night Tour - or any other events
inside the prison.
North Yard
