Nelsonville, Ohio is a rather old city.

Although we think of two hundred years as being old, but I've often wondered about you people who as you drive down to the Valley what you're thinking about.

You see our beautiful hills, you see the trees, you may not know all of them but nevertheless you see the roadside green and you see our city and you say what a marvelous city it is and what an interesting history nestled in the southeastern corner of Ohio lies a great valley with an ancient river flowing through its basin.

Originally this river flowed north but as glaciers crept down from the arctic, their walls of ice soon blocked the stream forming a large lake.

Eventually the lake grew so large that the river doubled back on itself, reversed course, and began its present day journey south.

Eventually spilling into the Ohio, the natives of this land called the river, "Hock Hocking" an ode to one of its unique geologic features.

If you follow the Hocking River, the Hock Hocking, up to its source northwest of Lancaster, you'll come to a place where the Hocking River is just wide enough to jump across and then it drops over a falls and it widens out into a large gorge right there Native American term that means bottle shaped or gorge shaped, so it goes from very narrow to very wide immediately.

In 1786 a New England real estate group, The Ohio Company of Associates, purchased land in the Northwest Territory - including the Hocking Valley - and in turn sold it to pioneers looking for a new future on the other side of the Appalachians.

The primary settlement group were New Englanders in this area and New Englanders were classists in their way of education and learning and thought and readings, so in Athens County in particular, you get classical names the city of Athens, the county of Athens the township of Athens.

You get Rome Township, Carthage Township, Troy Township, all of these bring forth various images of the Greek classics and Roman classics as well into this area and they remain on the landscape today.

In 1818, parts of Dover and Ames Townships in Athens County were combined to create "York" township - named in part by the many English immigrants migrating to the frontier.

Among the early settlers of York Township was George Courtauld.

A British Silk Merchant who laid out the village of "Englishtown" along the banks of the HockHocking in an effort to attract more immigrants from the British Isles.

Around the same time, and less than a mile away, Daniel Nelson, from Massachussetts set aside 57 lots to create his own village.

Soon new settlers had the option of choosing whether to move to Courtauld's "Englishtown" or the newly formed... "Nelsonville".

George wanted too much for the lots so they ended up coming up here to Nelsonville, which was not even half mile but to them I suppose it was a lot farther.

And after George died, they moved the post office to here in Nelsonville so the English town just kind of became part of the east end of Nelsonville.

Nelsonville continued to attract new residents and by 1830 boasted 12 families.

Among these early citizens was James Knight, who in 1830 became the first person to transport Coal from the Hocking Valley to Columbus, selling it for 4 cents a bushel.

He took two wagons, a hundred and sixteen bushels of coal, and sold them for four cents a bushel.

He made four dollars and sixty-four cents; he made a profit, but he saw the problems in getting that product to Columbus.

To get to Lancaster, Ohio which now is a forty minute drive.

It took them four days.

The old roads anyway were originally Indian trails or bison trails so if you're talking about moving some of the early grains they were growing here.

Well it tended to spoil before they got it to a large market and by the time you get something from from Southeast Ohio to say Pittsburgh or Cincinnati, best thing to do with your grain is to distill it a little bit and then move it as whiskey, and that was one of the early things that they moved and it was one of the early things they put on boats.

Flatboats down the Hocking River problematic in summertime or low water time.

You would essentially build your flatboat, load your goods on them, hire someone that you trusted, and send it off to New Orleans.

Typically then they sold the boat and then walked back up North here.

The reward was great, the risk was equally great or greater.

In 1836, after recognizing the need for a new way of transporting the valley's rich mineral resources, the Ohio Legislature approved the construction of the Hocking Valley Canal - a project that would connect Nelsonville to the newly dug Ohio/Erie canal - and the rest of the world.

When finished the canal stretched 56 miles from Lancaster to Athens and through the heart of downtown Nelsonville - ushering in a new era of prosperity in the growing village.

The canal did two things: it allowed them to get both agriculture commodities, raw materials and manufactured goods out of the area to markets, but it also allowed boats to bring in manufactured goods from New York, even Europe, or places like that, so it brought in materials that merchants could sell in their stores.

The canal sparked an early coal boom and provided the rest of the state a glimpse of the vast mineral deposits that lay buried under the Southeastern Ohio hills.

You have to start imagining if you have a city of Columbus that needs coal.

Coal merchants are going to make a fortune, because what else are you going to do?

You'll burn down every tree.

Well then you have these other urban centers developing.

They need natural resources, you supply them, how are you going to get them there?

In 1844 around 5,000 tons of hand-dug coal were shipped out of the valley.

By 1860 that number had grown to more than 60,000 tons.

The canal was also used as a method of transportation for the valley's citizens.

And as the nation moved to the brink of Civil War - many soldiers from Nelsonville boarded canal barges on their way to the front.

While most of the war's battles raged hundreds of miles away - in the Summer of 1863 the residents of Nelsonville suddenly found the fight at their front door.

In early June of that year, Confederate General John Hunt Morgan led his group of 2,000 cavalrymen on a raid through Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio.

Along the route Morgan's men raided villages and stole horses and supplies from northern citizens - earning themselves a reputation as a band of fierce outlaws, bushwackers and thieves.

But it was the very opposite from General Morgan.

General Morgan hated that thought that they were lumped in with the bushwhackers and murderers.

Morgan's troops were not like that.

They were a true Southern army and more importantly, General Morgan himself was one who believed in being a Southern gentleman, and he expected his troops to act the same way.

In fact, we don't have any documented case of any type of murder or rape against the females.

On the morning of July 19th, Morgan found himself surprised by the fast-approaching Union Army, and was forced to fight the Battle of Buffington Island in Meigs County.

Though they fought valiantly, Morgan's men were soon overwhelmed, and were forced to retreat.

After hiding in the wilderness of Jackson and Vinton Counties for several days, Morgan's men soon made their way east towards Athens County.

Militia from all over the valley soon rushed to the city of Athens, to defend the county seat from the oncoming Confederate advance.

But Morgan had other ideas - and early on the morning of July 22nd his men crossed the Hocking River bridge and arrived at the city limits of Nelsonville.

They never thought Morgan's men would arrive in Nelsonville, and so they were very surprised by their arrival.

Immediately the mayor of Nelsonville surrenders the town to Morgan without a shot.

By the time Morgan's men were done with Nelsonville, they had taken forty two horses in the area.

The other thing they needed to do was take care of anything military and so they destroyed ten canal boats along the Hocking canal, and most of those canal boats were corralled in what we call the Hocking Street canal basin, which is located today at the northwest corner of present day US-33 Business and Rocky Boots Way.

When the blaze was finally extinguished - only one canal boat survived - The Custer, owned by the Stewart family who had convinced Morgan the boat was their home - and begged him not to burn it.

Mrs.

Stewart stood on the deck of the Custer with baby in arms and pleaded with Morgan not to burn their home, and Morgan was so touched by this that he ordered his men to save the Custer, to not burn it, and was successful at keeping the Custer from being burned.

Morgan stayed in Nelsonville until 2PM at which time he departed towards Perry County.

The pursuing Union forces arrived in Nelsonville 3 hours later and were greeted by an overwhelming show of support from the local citizens.

And so they set up tables in the town square at Nelsonville and set up a grand banquet, and they took advantage of it and all their men ate to their content that night there at Nelsonville before they set up camp around that Buchtel area, what is today the Buchtel area.

Morgan made it as far as Steubenville, Ohio where he was captured before imprisonment in Columbus.

However, he masterfully escaped and headed south.

Almost a year later he was surprised by a Union attack in Greenville, Tennessee and fatally shot in the back when he refused to halt.

When the war ended, Athens County had contributed more than twenty-six hundred soldiers to the Union cause.

♪ music After the war - Nelsonville got back to business.

New stores began to pop up on the Public Square, and soon the old canal was replaced with a new and faster mode of transportation.

During the Civil War, there was a move on to start a railroad into the Hocking Valley which would ultimately terminate in Athens.

In 1869, the Columbus and Hocking Valley railroad really reached Nelsonville, and then the next year it pushed on to Celina and Athens.

With the addition of the railroad, the Hocking Valley coal fields flourished, and the growth seemed unstoppable.

The train arrived in Nelsonville in 1869 and immediately the growth was phenomenal.

In 1872, more than 250,000 tons of coal left Nelsonville - more than 4 times the amount shipped on the canal only a decade earlier.

♪ music Soon, smaller mining towns began to pop up throughout the valley - with Nelsonville acting as a central hub for these "Little Cities of Black Diamonds".

It's by far the largest little city.

The next town of any comparable size was Shawnee, and then Shawnee was always bigger than Glouster, if you can believe that.

It was 1920 before Athens surpassed Nelsonville in population.

Nelsonville was THE city in Athens County.

Athens was just a little college town with a courthouse.

One of the common misconceptions about these communities were they were hillbilly towns, and they weren't at all because they were mostly populated by European immigrants who had a love for music and literature and a cultured life.

They were much more cultured than you might expect.

You see pictures of miners' conventions and they're all wearing suits.

Not looking like you know they just crawled out of a coal mine; they're dignified and distinguished looking people.

It was a place of immense wealth.

People displayed that wealth.

How did they display it?

With their homes usually, but also their investments in the community and that sort of thing.

Among those investments in the community was George Stuart's Opera House.

Stuart initially began his career in show business by producing theatrical performances on his boat floating along the Hocking Canal.

George Stuart's boat burned down and was destroyed and he decided at that time to build an actual physical venue, which is Stuart's Opera House and that happened in 1879.

So there were traveling theater companies that would go from town to town.

They would hang playbills around town, spread the word that there was going to be a performance this coming weekend, and then perform at the end of the week.

And then they would pack everything up in horse and buggy and move on to the next town.

And it's a common misnomer that people think that opera was performed there.

Probably very rarely was opera ever performed at these opera houses, but an opera, the term opera, was considered to be highfalutin'.

Opera was considered to be high culture.

In addition to that, many people think of them as really being theaters.

They really aren't theaters either.

Part of the reason they're not called theaters is that theater is considered to be disrespectable at that point.

A single woman would never go to a theater and it was considered culturally, morally suspect.

The Welsh did not approve of theater at all, and one of them was writing at the time of Lincoln's assassination and said yes we are deeply mourned by our president's passing but after all he did die in a theater, which kind of was like "Oh okay".

Whereas opera is safe.

And so therefore it's not an opera house and it's also not really a theater.

It's a place where people can come together for anything and everything.

Some theatrical performances, but really everything else also.

About half of the events were what we would generally consider to be theater, but that leaves the whole other half that's not theater and those would consist of high school graduations, recitals, boxing matches.

The story is they scheduled a boxing match here and many of the women of the town were up in arms because the boxing match meant all the men were getting excited, getting boozed up, and the women thought it was sort of barbaric so they protest and supposedly the boxing match never happened.

Then there proceeded to be fistfights out in the street because the men were drunk and ticked off because the boxing match didn't happen.

They had their own - boys will be boys.

While many in Nelsonville experienced great prosperity - tensions between coal operators and coal miners began to increase.

Conditions in the mines were extremely dangerous and accidents were common.

The other real problem for the miners is that they weren't guaranteed a forty hour work week fifty two weeks a year.

It was when the mine needed the coal they would be called to work but miners were at the whim of the mine owners.

Many coal companies paid their miners in "script" or store credit instead of cash, forcing the miners to shop at the company store instead of having the freedom to choose where to spend their wages.

The company store typically charged a third more than the regular stores in the communities, and if you were forced to shop at the company store, you were in trouble.

Plus, they sold you your shovel and your pick, that wasn't provided as part of the job, so you had to take your own equipment in.

All that had to come out of your pay from the company before you ever got paid so in many cases you owed the company store, they didn't owe you, so you never saw any cash anyhow.

In 1883 many of the coal companies in the Hocking Valley merged, creating "The Columbus and Hocking Coal and Iron Company" also known as "The Syndicate".

With this merger the companies had the power to unilaterally lower wages.

In the summer of 1884 the Syndicate's power reached a tipping point.

They dropped it by twenty, and in some cases thirty cents a ton, and the miners issued notice that they were going on strike and they walked out.

And that was in July and the strike ran until March of the next year.

With no work due to the strike, many miners and their families were pushed to the brink of starvation, and violence soon erupted in the Little Cities.

In nearby New Straitsville striking miners pushed burning cars into a mine - causing an underground blaze that still burns to this day.

The strike owners brought in the Pinkerton guards and they were pretty rough handed, described in some publication as thugs taken off the streets of Chicago and Cleveland to come here to rough up the miners.

So as families began to starve and they were being kicked out of their company owned housing, the attitudes changed significantly.

By the start of the new year, the State Legislature had called for an investigation into the strike, and even though the strike ended up being settled and the miners did not gain their wages back, many changes came about because of the strike.

Meetings between various labor factions at Robinson's Cave in nearby New Straitsville, ultimately led to the formation of what would become the nation's single mining union - The United Mine Workers of America.

I think the region's biggest contribution to the labor movement was the first ever jointly negotiated interstate labor contract in America where the miners and the mine owners sat down in a hotel room and negotiated for until they came up with to set the price per ton of coal.

The miners here in Nelsonville and the little cities played that important significant role in our nation's labor history.

While many of the Mine Operators were seen as greedy and unjust by the miners - a few exceptions remained - including Akron industrialist John R. Buchtel of the Akron Iron Company who laid out the mining camps of Bessemer and Buchtel.

Buchtel was part of The Syndicate.

He was vice president in it, but he didn't like it at all and many of the miners argued that Buchtel was a fair operator, but once he merged into this Columbus and Hocking Coal and Iron Company, you know he didn't have the full say in things anymore.

He was so overcome with stress from the strike and the problems related to it that he was physically sidelined for a number of months.

Because of the stress of the strike, he saw both sides of the picture and tried to be fair but in the end was swept up with the syndicate movement.

In addition to his work in Coal and Iron, Buchtel was also known as a major philanthropist.

In 1867 he donated $25,000 for the foundation of Buchtel College - which is known today as The University of Akron.

As Nelsonville moved into the 20th century, the spirit of innovation and industry present during the late 1800s showed no signs of slowing down.

EM Poston realized that the best way to get coal out of the valley was over electric lines - and his coal powered electric station became the first AC generator west of the Allegheny mountains.

And from 1913 to 1930, his electric streetcar system connected Nelsonville to Athens, allowing citizens to commute between the two cities for work and leisure.

Meanwhile Thomas Dew's hotel served as a destination for travelers and political figures alike.

The Dew House had a restaurant in it, and also connected was a doorway through that led into the mine tavern and from the mine tavern right next to it was the barber shop.

They were all connected together so people who came, especially gentlemen, you know they got your shoes shined there, you could get a shave, you could get a haircut.

Presidents William McKinley and Warren G Harding both stayed at the hotel, and over a period of 5 days in May 1912 William Howard Taft and Teddy Roosevelt campaigned against each other from the hotel's front porch.

We were a hub.

We had thousands of people and I believe they felt the vote numbers were here to help bring them a dream come true to be the President of the United States.

After more than 50 years of prosperity, the coal mines in the Hocking Valley began to be replaced by newer, mechanized mines in West Virginia and Kentucky.

♪ some were sick and suffered ♪ for a dull lump of coal Coal miners that worked with picks and shovels were more or less skilled skilled labor.

Coal miners were increasingly being transformed into coal loaders which was considered a less skilled form of work.

And the union had become so successful in negotiating wages and the eight hour work day that the mines here had a difficult time producing enough coal to meet the wage demands of the union contract.

The other thing that kind of saved people in this area was the brick industry though, and towns with brick plants did a lot better than communities that didn't have brick plants.

Fortunately for Nelsonville, a rich tradition of brick making had already been established for several decades.

Thanks to an abundance of high quality clay lining the valley, Nelsonville was perfectly situated to take advantage of the nation's growing demand for a stronger brick.

It was more mud being, you know, being generated in peoples pathways whether they were driving random horses, or walking and so they needed a denser heavier brick.

Clay was mixed with sand, glazed with salt and baked in beehive kilns that soon dotted the landscape.

Many brick plants were able to produce as many as 7,000 bricks daily, and in 1890, the Crane yard produced a record 10,262 bricks in a single day.

So you had this vitrified clay that was really resistant, really hard, because they were fired longer and then they had this salt glaze on them that gave them additional resistance to weathering.

The result is a hundred years today they're practically as good as when they were made a hundred years ago.

Many blocks produced in the Hocking Valley were imprinted with their company names on the side in raised letters - a feature that served as both a marketing tool as well as an ingenious functional purpose.

You'll see like Hocking Valley block or Nelsonville block.

All of this wasn't even meant to be seen, and when they put those in the streets sideways those things would stick out, butt up against the next brick, and then they would be evenly spaced that way.

The Nelsonville Block was of such high quality that it was entered in the 1904 World's Fair in St.

Louis - where it earned the distinction of being named "World's best brick".

Along with street pavers - Nelsonville also produced many ornamental sidewalk pavers as well, most notably the Star Brick.

I don't know if it's an oxymoron for me to call it the blue-collar ornamental brick, high-end brick, but it's one of the more common ones you see.

They made a lot of them here.

They made some other designs to like circle designs and square designs and they're like the nicest bricks in the whole country.

There's very few places around the country that have a brick as beautiful as these bricks are, which a lot of people take them for granted around here because they see them all the time.

But in other places they're just blown away at how amazingly cool these bricks are.

It's not unusual to be in a small town, in say Indiana or Illinois or other parts of the country, and see a star brick.

The brick industry enjoyed prosperity in Nelsonville through the 1930's, but new and cheaper methods of paving soon replaced the more expensive handcrafted blocks.

Concrete and the Depression is what took out a lot of the brick industry.

As the Great Depression began to take its toll on the country, Nelsonville also began to struggle.

And when President Roosevelt announced the formation of his Works Progress Administration - an effort to provide employment for able-bodied men through community improvement projects - several Nelsonville Citizens led the charge to bring Federal relief to Nelsonville.

Among those leaders was Rev.

John Lloyd Evans, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Nelsonville.

People would say John Lloyd Evans has done so much for not just Nelsonville, but the whole Hocking Valley, because he exposed us and he would write to the President of the United States and say we need help here where our men and women need jobs and we'd been through the Depression.

The Works Progress Administration, it gave people a paycheck, but it also built things in our town that we wouldn't have had otherwise.

My most immediate concern is in carrying out the purposes of the great Work Program just enacted by the Congress.

Its first objective is to put men and women now on the relief roles to work, and incidentally to assist materially in our already unmistakable march towards recovery.

After being destroyed by floods in the late 1800's the Hocking Canal had long since been abandoned; and in the early 1930s Rev.

Evans proposed a plan to the Federal Government to fill it in, pave it, and create a new highway through Nelsonville.

Work began in 1933 and created what is present day Canal Street.

And as you go right on down Canal Street, if you notice the houses along that road they're all facing away from Canal Street, their backyards and things, so it's an interesting artifact that still exists in the modern era that you drive down the Main Street and you're not looking at the front of the houses you're looking at the rear of the houses, and that's because that was the canal at the time.

The Works Progress Administration also provided many other community improvements for Nelsonville.

The funds were used for a new swimming pool which provided summer activities for the city's youth for decades, and salvaged canal blocks were used to create a retaining wall dividing upper and lower Oak Streets.

The remaining blocks were also used to create the stone bleachers at Crabtree Field.

After the decline of the coal and brick industries, Nelsonville began searching for new forms of business to provide employment for the city's residents.

And in the early 1930s William and Mike Brooks moved to town to start a new factory of their own.

The old shoe factory here in Nelsonville had been built by the city of Nelsonville to attract jobs, businesses.

And two, I believe it was, two shoe companies had failed, two small shoe companies had failed in that building.

So the brothers came down to Nelsonville in 1932 to make shoes.

We contracted early with Sears, Roebuck and JCPenney and built shoes for them under their names.

And they were predominantly Goodyear welts.

They would last forever, I mean you just couldn't not wear them out.

They may not have been very comfortable, but they would last forever.

The factory soon employed more than 200 people and production reached more than 2,000 pairs of shoes per day, and ultimately provided more than one million pairs of shoes and boots to the United States Government for World War Two and The Korean War.

In 1960 Bill Brooks sold the company to the Irving Drew Shoe Company in Lancaster, who operated it for 15 years before looking to sell in 1975.

Determined to bring the business back under his family's control, John Brooks repurchased the company.

We were just making shoes for Sears, Roebuck, JCPenney, Thom Mcan.

We were just a shoe maker for other brands.

I said we need a brand, well let's use the family name.

Let's use Brooks.

Well Brooks Brothers Clothing was suing Brooks Running Shoes and we said heck with the family name.

We gotta pick another name, 'cause we don't want in a lawsuit.

So I said I think there's a movie out by the name of 'Rocky' and I said I think there's a mountain out west by the name of 'Rocky'.

That's kind of a bold name, so I said let's use 'Rocky'.

So that's how the name 'Rocky' came about.

But we did have to agree to the filmmaker that made the movie 'Rocky' that we would not make boxing shoes and boots so we agreed to that with the name.

Today Rocky's corporate headquarters remain in Nelsonville and the company is one of the largest employers in town, with employees coming to Nelsonville from the entire Hocking Valley Region.

I think there's about three hundred and fifty employees here in Nelsonville, including the warehouse.

We have people that live in Columbus and drive every day.

We have a lot of people who live in Athens, a lot of people who live in Logan, and many people that live in Nelsonville still so it's a pretty big mix.

Education has always been a central theme in Nelsonville.

When Daniel Nelson laid out the original town, he reserved a lot for the construction of a school on the public square, an area that now holds a monument to Nelson and the bell from the original Central School.

When they started out, there was the Central School on the square.

Then there was a West School down here on Washington and there was one on the East end.

So they had quite a few elementary, and then they built what was originally the high school on Fayette Street.

In the 1960s Nelsonville City Schools and the York School District consolidated to form the Nelsonville-York School District.

And soon, two more educational institutions were created in Nelsonville.

What happened was in the 60s, Governor Rhodes, James Rhodes, was pushing for the development of vocational high schools all over the state.

And what developed then was attracting Perry County and Hocking County to join with Athens County and start the Tri-County Joint Vocational School District with the schools from all three counties, and it just so happened that when you put those counties all together Nelsonville happened to be the most central location and so that's why we decided to locate the school there.

We were assured by the Federal Government that if we passed our tax levies to build the vocational school that they would give us a grant of five hundred thousand dollars, half a million dollars, a lot of money at that time, to build a two-year technical college right there on the campus of the vocational school.

It was voted for by over eighty percent of the Nelsonville voters who really came out to support it, and so the Tri-County Joint Vocational School was constructed and right next door to it was the Tri-County Technical Institute, a two-year technical college.

You had the vocational education and the technical education on the same campus.

Then of course later it became Hocking Technical Institute and Hocking Technical College, and eventually Hocking College, which was of course was moved then to the beautiful two hundred acre campus that they're on now just south of Nelsonville.

Over the years, Hocking College has provided a quality technical education to generations of area students - a tradition that continues to this day.

As Nelsonville moved into the modern era, much of the town's 19th century charm and appearance remained.

And this classic All-American image made Nelsonville the perfect location for multiple Hollywood productions - beginning with the 20th Century Fox film Mischief in 1985.

It was interesting just watching the filming and how they did it.

And they put up all of those different awnings on the square because they wanted to have it have that type of ambience.

It was just, it was fun for everybody because you know, we weren't used to watching a Hollywood movie being made.

For recess we walked down here to watch because I went to the school here in town so it wasn't that far.

And they'd walk us down and we'd get to see some of the scenes.

People congregated downtown to watch the film and take pictures.

A friend of mine actually accidentally got in a scene once because she thought she was watching and she was in the middle of a scene.

My two older children, they were both an extra in it.

Actually the bike wreck scene was filmed in front of my house and I had to like sneak through the cemetery and into the back of my house to get home.

And the town was full of people.

We would go to, uh, there used to be a place called Pizza Crossing, and all the guys that were in the movie were in there Doug McKeon and Kelly Preston would be in there eating at the same time as the rest of us.

It was, it was fun.

Who would have ever thought Nelsonville would have been the scene of a movie and then after that, they came here and did the promotion for Wheel of Fortune.

♪ And you've got it, ♪ The Wheel is spinning, ♪ America is winning, ♪ Winning at the Wheel ♪ "She's so beautiful Mommy!"

♪ This is your moment That was a completely different, but oh, there were many many many people who came to watch the filming of Mischief and then also then to do the commercial.

♪ Wheel of Fortune, who's life ♪ will it change tonight?

After closing its doors in 1924, Stuart's Opera House sat empty for decades - until an inspired group of citizens began an effort to restore it to its original glory.

You know there was no reason to tear it down because the economy here in Nelsonville was not strong, and it sat empty as storage until the 70s.

Typically the model is, there is one person who is obsessed with the Opera House.

And one person, of dare I say of kind of questionable sanity, with this obsession.

A kind of Don Quixote figure who is determined to make this Opera House survive.

In Nelsonville it's Spenny Steenrod.

And so Spenny is determined to keep that Opera House alive, is determined to have it reopen and that becomes his mission.

He formed a non-profit, started the process of bringing the Opera House back to life.

And in 1977, the doors were opened again for its first performance in more than 50 years.

One day, it was in 1980, I was in my office working and my executive vice president came running into my office, he had the office next to me that overlooked the square, and he said, "Dick I think the Opera House is on fire."

And I jumped up and we ran out to the window to look straight across and I said, "My God yes, Dilbert, it's on fire.

Go call the fire department."

And of course, the Opera House was devastated.

While the local fire departments were ultimately able to save the building from the blaze - water from the fire-hoses was absorbed into the Opera House's wooden beams until the weight became too much to bear - leading to a catastrophic cave-in several days later.

So the fire caused serious damage, and then days later, the cave-in caused even more damage.

And luckily at that point, there were enough community members who saw the value of Stuart's Opera House, not only the historic value of this space and building, but the potential future value, and they started working hard and raising money and rebuilt the space.

17 years later, the Opera House reopened in 1997, and now once again provides entertainment for the entire Hocking Valley and beyond.

Stuart's Opera House houses over around seventy five events per year.

We've been fortunate enough to bring in many, many Grammy Award-Winning performances.

Stuart's Opera House also produces the Nelsonville Music Festival - a 4 day event on the campus of Hocking College that showcases both local and national musical acts.

The Nelsonville Music Festival is a production of Stuart's Opera House; it's basically our biggest show of the year.

We even added Thursday night, so we're technically now a four day festival.

Last year we say there were about seven thousand people there.

A diverse selection of musical acts brings visitors from the entire country to Nelsonville.

Past performers include Willie Nelson, Loretta Lynn, Merle Haggard, and many more.

We want a music festival that's known to music lovers, and it's an eclectic lineup.

It's not country, it's not just rock and roll, it's not just folk.

It's a little bit of all of that and we hope that it's quality.

It's definitely intended to bring the whole family.

The Nelsonville Music Festival is just one of many major events held in historic Nelsonville throughout the year.

Among the most notable is the annual Parade of the Hills - held every August.

The Parade was first organized in 1950 as a way for many civic organizations to raise money for local charities.

It was just to help the needy is what the original plan was, and I know the Elk's I think the Eagles the VFW all the other organizations, fraternal organizations around town and I know there's others I've missed.

But that's what there all founded about it was just kind of a fundraiser to do that, and then they just had a little festival and then they got together.

Then they ended up getting some rides in and making it a little bit bigger and then it's just, it's escalated from there.

The parade soon grew to become a major festival, with more than 20,000 visitors descending on Nelsonville.

The highlights of the parade include rides for kids, the Ohio State Fiddling Championships and the crowning of Miss Parade of the Hills.

And Nancy Smith Maiden was the very first Miss Parade of the Hills, and her family actually helped develop the scholarship for the Parade of the Hills Queen which makes our pageant a little more attractive to a lot of the girls in the area, but originally it was kind of a community thing, and it was a great honor for the girls to be Miss Chauncey or Miss The Plains or Miss McArthur or Miss Nelsonville.

That was an honor in itself, and then you went on from that step to compete to be Miss Parade of the Hills because the pageant itself was actually designed by the Miss Ohio Pageant.

They came and helped us set it all up.

And we love the Parade of the Hills.

It's so much fun, and seeing everyone come from throughout the valley and even from out of state to come to Parade of the Hills every year, that's just so exciting.

And we do get people that come to town just for the festival to have a vacation here.

It just makes us all better.

It makes our community better as a whole, and it's that kind of excitement, that volunteer spirit, that keeps Nelsonville alive.

It keeps Parade of the Hills going.

Along with the Music Festival and the Parade of the Hills - visitors to Nelsonville can also take a ride on the historic Hocking Valley Scenic Railway, which was created in the late 1970's and offers guests a chance to ride on many historic railcars.

[train whistle and bell] Among the early features of the railway was a car donated by McDonald's founder Ray Kroc.

Ray Kroc had a personal railroad car, beautiful car, and he decided to donate it to the Hocking Valley Scenic Railway.

And so a group of us, including myself, were invited to Columbus to ride with Ray on the car and brought it down to Nelsonville behind the engine.

It was a nice ride, we had hors d'oeuvres and things you know, and Ray was there, the founder of McDonald's, rode all the way down with us.

In addition to weekly rides - the scenic railway also provides special trips - including the October Fall Foliage train and the Santa train.

This is a museum on wheels.

All of our cars are basically back from the 1920s and the 1930s.

Our green coaches are from 1927, our B & O coach, which is our blue and grey coach, it's from 1939.

The railway is also in the process of restoring two authentic steam engines - similar to the locomotives that hauled coal and brick out of the valley a generation before.

Around 1980, AEP Ohio Power donated us two locomotives, two steam engines, one is a tea-kettle type locomotive, the other one is the locomotive that you see here today, and that's a Baldwin 060 built in 1920, and it was built for the Windsor Power Plant over on the Ohio River.

There's and excursion of steam around the country where they are rebuilding these locomotives and getting back to operating standards.

This is part of history of this country.

This is what made this country.

The Public Square is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places, along with Stuart's Opera House and the Dew House.

And while it was once a center of commerce for coal and clay - it has been reimagined in recent years and is now a popular shopping destination.

Art galleries, boutiques and coffee shops occupy storefronts that once housed the giants of industry in the Hocking Valley.

Well you either roll over and die, or you reinvent yourself.

We've tried to reinvent ourselves with the arts and tourism.

Hocking Valley Scenic Railway brings thousands of people to town.

You know they go to Easton and it was recreated to look like something like we already have, ours is original.

On the last Friday of every month the Public Square comes alive with activity for the Final Friday celebration.

Street performers, artists and other vendors provide entertainment while local art galleries, shops and other businesses stay open well into the evening.

♪ music I love my town.

I wouldn't want to be any place else but here.

I like the feeling of being able to go someplace and you know everybody you see, you know you can talk to people on the streets, you're not just a nameless face.

You know the Public Square is beautiful, and we are in the middle of the Wayne National Forest.

I call it God's country.

It's just my base.

It's in my soul.

It's in my heart.

There's a group of people in the community that really care about Nelsonville, and they do what it takes to help Nelsonville get better.

And then they know, at some point in time, that they'll get it back.

Why not be a part of your community?

Why not make it better?

Why not get out there and try to do your best, and put your best foot forward?

We're proud of who we are, and that pride that you learn from being here is significant.

There's an opportunity to be able to do something, and I can do it in Nelsonville.