Midwest Lost Site Blog

My girlfriend and I took advantage of the awesome weather in Columbus, Ohio today to do some exploring. We ended up visiting 3 cemeteries so I could photograph them. The cemeteries were Brown Pet Cemetery, Primitive Baptist Cemetery, and Silent Hill Cemetery.

My favorite was the pet cemetery. I was amazed at how expansive the cemetery was. I left a bit sad thinking of how many loved family members and friends were buried there.

I hope to get the HTML written in the next few days.

This post will be cross posted between my personal blog and the Midwest Lost blog.

This last weekend, I went out with Ron (Carrie’s father) to go metal detecting. The event was put on by dfxonly.com metal detecting club, and was held at Camp Tuscazoar in North East Ohio.

This was my first adventure in metal detecting, although I had always wanted to try it. I have to say I greatly enjoyed it and cannot wait to be able to go out again. I met a lot of great guys (and ladies), and had a lot of fun. The stuff the group found was awesome. Personally, I found some old rifle shell casings (there were a lot of these just laying on the surface, as the camp had been used by the US military at some point for training), a silver plated spoon, this really neat twisted tent spike that I suspect may be wrought iron, and a 1944 Walking Liberty silver half dollar. I would have been very very happy with the other things I found. The Walking Liberty was just icing on the cake. Ofcourse I would have been equally happy with any coinage. Be it a wheat back penny, a buffalo nickel, or really anything. Being my first coin, I’m very very excited.

I’ve spoken with Ron, and we are discussing other sites to visit and explore. We are starting to discuss other places we can go and we may go out next weekend for afew hours.

I’ve had these pictures of the “S” bridge in Blaine, Ohio online for atleast a year and realized lately that I never wrote any HTML for them. Today I took the chance to write up an HTML page for the “S” Bridge, and do some house cleaning on my Belmont County page.

I also visited the bridge the weekend before last. I just didn’t have my camera to get some shots. I plan a visit to Belmont County very soon and get pictures of the bridge along with afew other things.

Last weekend I did some more exploring with Beth (from Grave Addiction), and another friend I met from beth’s message board. I’ve been searching for a grave yard that is near the eastern end of US 40, and Justin (from the GA message board) stated that he knew of one that fit the description that I had. He had also heard that they had closed off the road to the Circle Cemetery, and we wanted to check that out. Beth, Justin, and myself agreed to meet and do some exploring.

I got to the meeting site (eastern end of US 40) early, and snapped some pictures while waiting. After meeting up with Beth & Justin, we headed to Moore Cemetery (on the property of The Med). This cemetery is one of the coolest. It’s so stereotypical of the old abandoned cemetery in the woods.
After taking pictures there, we decided that we needed to verify the rumor about the Circle Cemetery. The rumor was false. We parked at the bottom of the hill (incase the road was closed, and walked up. We walked up far enough to see where the road goes around the cemetery and that it was not blocked off.

Being as no visit to Egypt Valley is complete without a stop at Salem Cemetery, we decided to make a quick stop. At first, I didn’t really want to stop. But I am very very glad I did. While Beth & Justin were inside the cemetery, I took a walk across the road where the church had stood. While looking down over the hill, I saw what appear to be a gob pile (waste material from mining coal). It also appeared to be some small chunks of coal. I kicked one of the larger ones and realized that it was sandstone. The top surface appeared to be charred, while the rest of it seemed to have clean edges like pieces had been chipped off over time. I have no way of proviing it, but it’s *possible* that the chunk of sandstone I found was part of the foundation of the church.

When leaving Salem Cemetery, we decided to hit the Indigent Cemetery on SR-331 across the road from Belmont Technical College. I was not aware, but this still appears to be an active cemetery, with the newest marker (a wooden cross) being from earlier in 2006. While we were here, I took them to see the covered bridge near by.

After that, Justin wanted to hit Union Cemetery to check look around for some relatives of his and Beth wanted to check out the English Baron’s grave. While in St. Clairsville, I took Justin & Beth to visit the cemetery where Thomas Carr is buried.

At this point, it was getting late, and we decided to run to Wheeling, to check out some sites. When we got to Wheeling, we first stopped at Mt. Wood Overlook (the concrete castle). We then crossed the street and checked out the Jewish Cemetery and Mt. Wood Cemetery (which are adjacent).

By this time, we had been out in the rain all day and decided to call it a day. We plan to go back to Union Cemetery, and hit some more sites in Wheeling when the weather allows.

I hope to have the HTML done for those new pictures this weekend.

Some people I know just came back from a vacation in Az.  They were kind enough to bring me back some pictures.  I figured I’d share them.  They went to Tombstone, Az and visited Boot Hill Cemetery while there, visited Hoover Dam, and saw the London Bridge on Lake Havasu.

Enjoy the pictures.