Barnesville Selected in 2001 as one of Ohio’s ‘Best Places to Live’
This year’s selection of Barnesville as one of Ohio’s Best Hometowns it appears not to be the first time Ohio Magazine has discovered our community.
Thanks to Mike and Jo Ann Barylak who saved a copy of the July 2001 magazine edition, Barnesville was profiled as one of nine best places to live in the state.
Other communities profiled by the editorial staff of the statewide magazine were the Cleveland Warehouse District, Columbus’s German Village, Marysville, Vermillion, Kent, Oberlin, Hide-A-Way Hills in Hocking County, and the Mt. Adams neighborhood in Cincinnati.
When presented with this evidence by chamber director Jill Hissom, neither magazine editor Jim Vickers nor this local historian were aware or remembered this honor. The magazine archive at the Barnesville Hutton Memorial Library only goes back three years. Since drafting this, we’ve discovered that one of Barylak’s Tacoma neighbors also has a copy of the magazine!. Digitized copies at the magazine also do not go back this far. A check of the 2001 Barnesville Enterprise files at the library reveals the newspaper contained no mention of Barnesville’s selection at that time.
[July 2001 Oho Magazine copy compliments of Mike and Jo Ann Barlyak]
The article describes the community almost a quarter of a century ago noting that cell phones and pagers are almost nonexistent. Yet, smart phones were a few years down the road.
Two of the four industries mentioned are gone – 5Bs and Shamrock Conduit – while a third, coal mining, is a mere shadow of what it was.
No lattes in 200l the writer states, while today there is a public hankering for a downtown, sit down coffee shop.
Perhaps most interesting is the final copy under “Deal Breakers”, proof that technology aside, small town life remains pretty much the same.
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