Friday, October 18, 2019

Milan Canal Article – October 16, 1956

Everyone probably knows that Milan, Ohio is the birthplace of inventor Thomas Alva Edison. But did you know that Milan was once a busy shipping port, thanks to a three-mile canal linking the tiny village to the Huron River and Lake Erie?

Read all about it in the interesting article below, which appeared in the Lorain Journal on October 16, 1956.

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Milan’s canal made the Journal again a year later, when it the paper printed the article below. It’s about the village’s first apartment house, built on the banks of the old canal. The article ran in the Journal on November 6, 1957.
And here’s a view of the apartments at 61 E. Front Street today, courtesy of Google Maps.

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4 comments:

  1. BusterOctober 18, 2019 at 10:58 AM

    Fascinating article, Dan.

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  2. Dan BradyOctober 18, 2019 at 11:36 AM

    Glad you liked it, Buster. It was all new to me, hard to believe such a sleepy little burg was such a busy seaport.

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  3. greenshirtOctober 18, 2019 at 12:45 PM

    they also had a relatively thriving ship building industry for a very short while in Milan.

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  4. RickOctober 18, 2019 at 4:30 PM

    As related in the article in the blog, the Directors of the Canal Company fought a losing battle with the railroads to protect their interests. The canal and the railroads finally came together when long after the canal had ceased operation, the Directors of the Canal Company, in 1881, entered into a contract with the Wheeling and Lake Erie Railroad to use the old canal tow path for the building of a branch line of the railroad from Norwalk to Huron. Probably the final triumph of the railroad over the canal.

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