Mill Creek Park Lanterman's Mill And Covered Bridge

by Lisa Wooten

Title

Mill Creek Park Lanterman's Mill And Covered Bridge

Artist

Lisa Wooten

Medium

Photograph - Photographs

Description

Purchased: 2022

Mill Creek Park (officially known as Mill Creek MetroParks) is a metropolitan park located in Youngstown, Ohio. The Trust for Public Land ranks one part of Mill Creek as the 142nd largest park located within the limits of a US city.1
Mill Creek MetroParks now stretches from the near west side of Youngstown to the southern borders of the city and neighboring Boardman township. The park “encompasses approximately 4400 acres (10.5 km²), 20 mi (32 km) of drives, and 15 mi (24 km) of foot trails”2 as well as a variety of bridges, ponds, streams, well-tended gardens, and waterfalls. If including the total size of the park system, Mill Creek ranks among the largest metropolitan-owned parks within the city limits of any US city.
Mill Creek Park was founded in 1891 due to the “untiring efforts of Youngstown attorney Volney Rogers.”2 Rogers secured options on much of the land and was able to purchase large tracts of it. This was no small task given that he was compelled to deal with more than 90 landowners.3 Once the land was secured, Rogers framed and promoted what he called the “Township Park Improvement Law.” Upon the law’s passage, Rogers turned over all of the land he had secured for park purposes.3 Rogers had the area declared a park by the state legislature. It officially opened in 1893.4
Rogers later enlisted the help of his brother Bruce, who had studied landscape architecture, and Bruce Rogers became the first Mill Creek Park superintendent.5 Earlier, the project benefited from the contributions of well-known landscape architect Charles Eliot, and Mill Creek Park is regarded as one of his notable works.6
The same year that the park opened, the Mahoning County commissioners issued bonds to pay for the parkland, and Rogers purchased $25,000 of them, with the understanding that they would be the last ones paid. Ironically, the financial panic of 1893 facilitated the park’s development. As a later newspaper account observed: “Unemployed men found work there. A second bond issue paid for their wages. The men cut trails, established drives, restored Pioneer Pavilion (a renovated factory building that was the oldest structure in the park) and built Lake Cohasset Dam”. Lanterman’s Mill was built in 1845–46 by German Lanterman and Samuel Kimberly. Restored in 1982–85 through a gift from the Ward and Florence Beecher Foundations, this community treasure represents one of the many pioneer industries developed along Mill Creek and operates today as it did in the 1800s, grinding corn, wheat, and buckwheat.
The nearby East Gorge Walk and West Gorge Trail offer a peek into the area’s geologic history. Listed in the Mid-America Walking Atlas, the award-winning Gorge Trail is a two-mile loop along Mill Creek that consists of a boardwalk bordered on one side by the stream and on the other side by a massive wall of sandstone. Wikipedia

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October 10th, 2017

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