Zane Grey Museum and National Road Museum

We are 25 miles from Zanesville, one of the first settlements of Ohio and birthplace of Zane Grey, the western fiction writer.  Dennis and Meg live in Columbus which is west of Zanesville so they drove to meet us and spend the day.  We visited the museum that tells the story of Ebenezer Zane, one of the first settlers of the area, his commission from Congress in 1796 to cut a trace (road) from Wheeling, Virginia (now West Virginia) to Limestone, Kentucky (now Maysville).  And as Thomas Jefferson said, build a road and they will come. Which is what happened, settlers came across the Appalachians to the Ohio Territory and settled once the National Road was built.  The trace was the path that the National Road (Route 40/Lincoln Highway in Illinois/Cumberland Road in Pennsylvania) followed as it crossed into Ohio from Pennsylvania and moved westward towards its ending destination, Vandalia, Illinois, where federal funds were depleted and the road building ceased.

Route of National Road

Ebenezer Zane's Trace

Markers along road in Ohio

Campers from 1909, is this us?

Story of Muddy Misers

The museum had wonderful dioramas depicting how the road was made, how lives were changed and towns grew up along the road.  Well done.  The museum also covers Zane Grey and his life and works.  Pearl Zane Gray was born in Zanesville, his maternal great grandfather was Ebenezer Zane.  Gray changed the spelling of his name to Grey and dropped the Pearl and with the enthusiastic encouragement and financial backing of his wife, Dolly, pursued his writing.  Took many rejections but eventually he had a winner in "Riders of the Purple Sage" novel and thus his future in the literary world was sealed.  Very colorful character, loved the outdoors, had many black moods which today is classified as having bi-polar disease.  It is said that Ernest Hemingway's novel, "Old Man And The Sea" was a story Zane told to Ernest about one of his fishing trips.  Needless to say, they never became friends.

Also housed in the museum is a history of Zanesville pottery.  At one time Zanesville was known as the pottery capital of the world prior to the 1920's.  Of 200 pottery making shops only 6 remain today.

Afterward we drove into Zanesville to eat.  Grey had a man who was friendly to him named Muddy Misers, a person his father said to stay away from but did not and often had the wrath of his very stern father giving him beatings for associating with Muddy.  The restaurant was called Muddy Miser, on the Muskingam River.  Good food.  Drove into town to see the famous "Y" bridge and was amazed it was so small, the pictures showed it to be really big and long.  A good day, learned a lot about Mr. Grey and also when driving through Zanesville was quite amazed at the very old buildings.