Homestead Inn Revisited

While out in Milan a week ago, I happened to be driving down U.S. Route 250 near the Turnpike and saw the new Love's Travel Stop (above). It's quite nice and has a Hardee's restaurant, which is always a welcome sight for those who love the chain's hamburgers (especially the Big Cheeseburger).

But I felt a little wistful, because the construction of the Love's necessitated the demolition of the old (and shuttered) Homestead Inn, which was located slightly north of where the travel center is situated. Here's how it looked back in 2017, when I did a two-part post about it.

And here's how it looked near the end, during the spring of 2025. Pretty sad.

Thanks to Google Maps, we can see how it all went down from 2019 to 2025, and how the Love's Travel Stop is situated relative to the former Homestead Inn.

August 2019

Nov. 2021

Aug. 2022

July 2024

May 2025

Oct. 2025

The entire Homestead property used to provide everything Ohio Turnpike travelers could ever need: food, lodging, recreation and auto service. Here's a vintage postcard showing the layout.

At the far right of the postcard, you can see a Gulf service station. Today, the former station building is the only building still standing. An old 'Homestead Farms' sign also managed to survive.

I tried to drive right up to the building for a closer photo but a "NO TRESPASSING" sign, as well as one saying the property was under surveillance, had been erected to keep out nosy bloggers.

LCCC Campus on Abbe Road Opens – October 3, 1966

Gene Patrick's "Passing Scene" cartoon of Saturday, October 1, 1966

Sixty years ago tomorrow, the Lorain County Community College campus on Abbe Road opened for the first time. Here's the front page article from the October 3, 1966 Journal with the story.

As the article noted, it was the first new community college campus in Ohio. Quite an honor.

The Journal featured a few photos from that first day of classes on campus in that same edition.

I checked to see if LCCC was having any sort of festivities scheduled in honor of the occasion. Since the college received its charter in 1963, it has already observed an extended 60th Anniversary celebration beginning in 2023 that included events on the Abbe Road location.

Here is the marker honoring LCCC as the first community college in Ohio with a permanent campus.

Courtesy RemarkableOhio.org

As noted on the Remarkable Ohio website, "Lorain County Community College has become a cornerstone of the community, contributing to the educational and social and cultural enrichment of all Lorain County residents." Well said.

After I graduated from Ohio State and came home to Lorain,  I decided to take some marketing classes at LCCC. I loved the campus, especially the library – which I had been visiting for years anyway. Every few years I drive around the campus and am constantly amazed at how beautiful it is, and how it's grown over the decades.

Lorain County is lucky to have it.

Lorain Journal Front Page – October 1, 1926

Rogers Hornsby, manager of the St. Louis Cardinals

One hundred years ago today, it was the first day of October 1926. The front page of the Lorain Journal that day was crammed with enough news to provide considerable background fodder and atmosphere for a Don Hilton crime novel. 

The big story was a raid on bootleggers by state liquor agents that didn’t go quite as well as planned, thanks to the fact that “a newspaper in a neighboring city printed a sensational story concerning state agents in Lorain.” The raids did result, however, in search warrants against “more than a score of Lorain bootleg establishments.”

The other big story was the World Series, which was set to open the following day in Yankee Stadium, between the New York Yankees and the St. Louis Cardinals.

Other news stories included: the Lorain County Commissioners promising support for the construction of a high level bridge over the Black River (it would take almost exactly another ten years before the dream was realized); the burning at sea of the freighter New Britain; the tragic death of the Erie Avenue bridge watchman; and the aftermath of the rescue of miners that were trapped for six days in the Pabst mine at Ironwood, Michigan.

On a lighter note, a small article reported that “prisoners of the Lorain city jail had a feast last night." 

"They were given the “leavings’ of the police department banquet, which included chicken, clams, corn on the cob, soup, near beer and potatoes. 

"The drinks did not last long among the prisoners. 

"“It was like pouring water down a sewer to watch the near beer disappear down the throats of the prisoners,” said Lieut. George Carson."

Model Home at 796 Milan Avenue in Amherst

Back in the 1920s and 30s, a beautiful model home built with all the modern touches was a big event, and worthy of coverage in the Lorain Journal. It was a nice opportunity for some publicity not only for the builder, but for all of the contractors involved, even if the articles were similar to what the paper ran in the business section decades later.

The article below, which ran in the paper on September 12, 1930, shines the spotlight on a new home in Amherst built by the Rahl and Mueller Lumber Company of Lorain. Contractors and suppliers include the Lorain Crystal Ice Company, the Amherst Hardware Co., Lehman Electric and Radio Service, the Mancrief Furnace Co., the Carl L. Kashman Co. and the Brunk Machine and Forging Co.

The address of the house is listed in the article as 854 Milan Ave., but in the intervening years the numerical address is now 796. It's located across from Sandstone Village.

It's still a beautiful and unique home – in a city with a lot of historic Sears Homes – that retains all of its original charm. 

Dunkin' Progress at Cooper Foster and S. Broadway

It's taking a little longer than I expected for the new Dunkin' to be built at the intersection of Cooper Foster Park Road and South Broadway. But I imagine it's in the home stretch now.

It really wasn't that long ago that the little house and tall trees were still there at the intersection. 

Here's roughly the same view from over the weekend.

I still think it's not the greatest location for a coffee and donut place. It's hard enough to get in and out of Flowerama across the street there, and it will probably be even more difficult when you add the additional traffic from Dunkin'. We'll see.

****

Dunkin' Donuts seems to have first appeared in our area in the fall of 1977. It was still in the planning stage in the spring of that year, and 'help wanted' ads showed up in the Journal in early November.

Here are the earliest ads I could find that ran in the Journal. The address of the shop at that time was 929 N. Leavitt, which today is just to the north of the Mr. Hero in the small shopping strip on the east side of the highway.

Nov. 21, 1977

Nov. 28, 1977

Feb. 1, 1978

It's interesting seeing Munchkins mentioned in the ad. I had forgotten that originally, Dunkin' used a Wizard of Oz tie-in to market their donut holes. Over time, however, the Wizard of Oz angle was dropped and the pieces of dough themselves became anthropomorphic.

Those Munchkins characters sure remind me of Timbits (the Tim Hortons donut holes).

The Timbit character used to have eyes, although they were so big they looked like olives.

 

Although I don't get up to Canada very much these days, I satisfy my yearning for Tim Hortons donuts and Timbits by visiting the restaurants in Ashland, Fremont, Columbus, and the Toledo area.

I've done two posts on Tim Hortons (so far).

"The Coupling" Article – Sept. 19, 1976

For many years, I've driven past a small park on State Route 13 near Milan that has several train cars sitting on the property. I was always in a hurry to get wherever it was I was headed, so I never stopped to investigate why they were there. 

That's why I was happy to find the article below, which appeared in the Journal back on September 19, 1976. It tells the story of how "The Coupling" – a nature retreat located along the Huron River that today is known as The Coupling Metropark – was born of an idea conceived in a Sandusky church.

But first – why was it christened, "The Coupling?"

"First, it is taken from the fact that two old railroad cars, a caboose and a boxcar, have been moved and set up as the first structures on the site along SR 13, just north of the Ohio Turnpike," notes the article. "Second, it describes the purpose of the project, to bring people together.

"The Rev. Robert L. Berger, a Minister at St. Paul's Lutheran Church, at the corner of Perkins Avenue and Mills Street in Sandusky, says the group is convinced that well-planned retreats will aid families and other groups "to come together more meaningfully.

"The gift of the 22-acre site to St. Paul's Lutheran Church by Mrs. Lilian Horn of Sandusky in 1957 paved the way for the start of the project. The land has been used for occasional wilderness-type camping or hiking by Boy Scouts, but it wasn't until 1973 that Pastor Berger began an ernest effort to develop it."

Berger wrote letters asking for old railroad cars, and eventually received a caboose from the Chessie system. He was also able to salvage an old boxcar from the same railway.

I spent a little time at The Coupling Metropark on Saturday. Since the time of the 1976 article, a historic Wheeling & Lake Erie /B&O railroad depot has been relocated to the property from Monroeville. A caboose (identified by some experts as an old Western Maryland caboose) sits adjacent to the depot.

The two original train cars – the caboose and boxcar were still there, connected by a platform, as recently as 2016.

Photo courtesy The Coupling Metropark

However, the boxcar has since been replaced by a small cottage. 

The red caboose still looks pretty good. Here's hoping it gets the TLC it needs to keep this worthy idea alive for another fifty years.

Click here to visit The Coupling Metropark page on the Erie MetroParks website.

Journal TV Page Featuring "Maverick" – Sept. 20, 1958

Well, the weekend is finally here! I'll no doubt enjoy a few nights (when I don't have to prepare a blog post for the next day) watching some TV, most likely the GRIT or OUTLAW channels.

So appropriately enough, I'll close out the week here on the blog with a full TV page from the Saturday, September 20, 1958 Lorain Journal. 

Of course the item of interest for me is the photo of James Garner and accompanying promotional copy about Maverick, which was about to start its second (and most successful) season on ABC on Sunday.

Maverick has been the subject of several posts. It was, and still is, a Brady favorite.

I always enjoy looking at old TV grids; they remind me of how much simpler times were back then. I actually preferred not having as many choices as we do now. TV used to be a shared experience; we could all talk about it the next day. Nowadays, it's almost unlikely that everybody in a small group of people actually watched the same thing, with all the streaming possibilities.

Also on the page is a great ad for Charcoal Pit, the subject of a few posts as well. I like the clip art in the ad.