By Roger J. Di Paolo
Record-Courier Editor
The coming of the railroad marked the start of a new era for Portage County in March 1851, when passenger and freight service between Ravenna and Cleveland began.
Within decades, a variety of railroads crisscrossed virtually the entire county -- only two townships, Shalersville and Randolph, never had rail service -- and Kent became a full-fledged "railroad" town as a major hub on the Erie line.
Talk of rail service, however, actually began two decades before the locomotive "Ravenna" made the first round-trip between its namesake community and Cleveland on March 13, 1851.
The citizens of Portage County were asked to share information about their community in 1831 as part of an assessment of a proposed rail line from New York City to the Mississippi River.
The enthusiastic response that inquiry prompted, which was published in the March 8, 1832, edition of the Ohio Star, offers a glimpse of a region poised to leave the isolation of the Western frontier behind 175 years ago.
Portage County, which then included two western tiers of townships later lost in the creation of Summit County, had about 18,000 residents and was looking toward continued growth.
"Our population is already considerable and rapidly increasing," the report noted, citing the "character of industry, intelligence and enterprise" of the county's residents.
The report, submitted on behalf of the county by Frederick Wadsworth, L.V. Bierce, Henry Newberry, Thomas Selby and Eliakim Crosby, included an inventory of the region's natural resources and stressed its accessibility to sources of water power.
Cultivated land sold for $10 to $15 per acre, with uncultivated land going for $2 to $5, the report noted. The land yielded about 30 to 40 bushels of corn per acre, and 15 to 20 bushels of wheat or rye.
In addition to those crops, "staples of the county" included horses, cattle, pork, beef, butter, cheese, potash and pearl ash, the panel noted.
Despite three decades of settlement, the area remained heavily wooded, according to the report, which listed 16 varieties of trees, including oak, maple, beech, cherry and walnut as well as bass, cucumber, butternut and "some pine." Oak timber sold for three cents per cubic foot.
The county boasted two manufacturers of cloth, several flouring and grist mills, furnaces and forges as well as scythe and ax factories, it was reported. There also were a paper mill and a number of shops engaged in the manufacture of furniture, chairs and stoneware, as well as gunsmiths and tinsmiths.
The report also noted four coal mines, but did not specify their location. The bituminous coal was of a quality that "will compare with good Liverpool coal, and is similar to that of Pittsburgh." It stated that 10,000 bushels of coal "have been sent down the canal in a season."
Yellow sandstone was reported in abundance, along with blue sandstone and brown sandstone. Iron ore "is found, and smelted to some extent," it was noted.
Commercial activity, the panel noted, focused on the New York market, 720 miles away. "At times our produce finds its market, in part, up the Lakes and at Montreal, and much of the produce of the dairy is sent down the Ohio."
The lack of accessible overland transportation posed a major handicap, however. "We are now shut out from all communities (along) the seaboard, by water, for six months in the year."
Railroad service to New York "would put (Portage) in a constant market and leave us in fair competition with those living near the seaboard," it was reported.
If the price of rail transportation proved to be as low as canal service, it continued, "it leaves little room to doubt the advantage to (the region) ... will be great."
The Portage County report concluded with an admonition that the proposed railroad "must ... be the thoroughfare for most of the travel between the country and the northern and middle Atlantic states" and a prediction of a bright future for what, in 1832, still was considered to be a novel means of transportation. "So great will be the advantages ... that it is believed it (the railroad) will be one of the strongest bonds of union between the eastern and western states," it observed.
"That it ... will one day be completed, we have little doubt, and we shall individually esteem ourselves happy, if by any means, we can aid in its accomplishment."
Portage County was more than ready to welcome a railroad in 1832, but it took 20 more years for the prophecy of Frederick Wadsworth, L.V. Bierce, Henry Newberry, Thomas Selby and Eliakim Crosby to come true.