Happy Birthday, Lorain – Part 1

Today is Lorain’s birthday. Happy Birthday to my hometown!

Back on April 5, 1924, the Lorain Journal was celebrating the city’s 50th birthday with a special edition of the paper. As noted in the lead article on the front page (shown above), “Just a half century ago, April 6, 1874, the 1,000 inhabitants of the then village of Charleston, were granted papers of incorporation.”

I know that some people might want to debate whether the 1874 date is correct; some may argue that 1807 is the real date, since that is supposedly when there was a log cabin near the mouth of the river, built by either Nathan Perry or Azariah Beebe. But the appearance of a log cabin is not the same as the founding of a city, which involves many standard civic activities such as an initial election.

Anyway, I’ll be reproducing some of the pages of that commemorative issue of the Journal during the next few days.

What’s creepy is that just a little more than two months after the 50th anniversary celebration, the city would be almost destroyed by the tornado of June 28, 1924.

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The front page above has a few interesting transportation tidbits.

The article with the heading, “BUSES MAY BE ORDERED OFF STREETS” involved the Collister-Freeman Motor Transportation Act, which placed all of the public carriers (freight or passenger) under the public utilities commission. Basically it required all bus lines to file an application with that commission. This was in response to complaints that the highways were being destroyed by carriers that weren’t paying their fair share of the upkeep via taxes.

I like how the Journal reported the Mayor’s response to the prospect of the Safety Director ordering the buses off the streets: “I couldn’t say. I don’t know anything about it,” was the snappy response from Lorain’s chief executive."

For you Lake Shore Electric fans, the article with the heading, MAYOR FAVORS CHANGE IN TRAFFIC, explains some changes that the city was requesting in the interest of improving traffic congestion. “At the meeting, street car service on the Yellow Line and freight service on the Lake Shore Electric also was discussed.

“It was decided to ask officials of the latter interurban company to run their freight cars thru the city at intervals of 15 minutes instead of running a string of five and six cars at the same time. At times this line of cars seriously blocks Erie-av traffic, it was charged."