Tawawa Park
While doing an on-line search for a future blog, I happened upon a name out of the past, Tawawa Park, in Sidney. Running across that name brought back so many wonderful memories. Mom would take us young kids along on her shopping trips to Sidney, which we enjoyed immensely as documented in this previous blog. But what I forgot to include in that blog was Mom would treat us to a drive through the park before we headed home.
To get there, she would typically drive south on Main Street under the Big Four Railroad bridge then circle around to Court Street and ride down the steep hill into Sidney that seemed like a roller coaster to us kids, then right at the bottom of the hill at Riverside Drive to the Tawawa Park entrance. We’d always go all the way to the end to see the Girl Scout camp called Brookside where my sisters attended summer camp when they got older.
My favorite parts were “Big Rock" and Tawawa Lake. We seldom stopped as Mom had to rush home to make supper. Unfortunately, those trips were before the covered bridge was built, but for sure that would have been another favorite to ride the car over over and through it as well.
Speaking of bridges, Tawawa Park incidentally originated because the Big Four railroad bridge replaced an old rail line though Sidney. The abandoned rail bed ran along the Miami river and a tributary called Mosquito Creek east of town. To think the park could have been named Mosquito Park; however the native American name for Mosquito, “Tawawa" was definitely a much better choice.
In 1948, when the rail bed and surrounding land came up for sale at $15,000, a Dayton area motorcycle group made overtures to purchase the land, which motivated civic leader Bill Milligan to take action. A local lawyer and eventual congressman, Milligan conceived the idea to secure the land for a park and created a list of 15 people whom he hoped would contribute a thousand dollars each to purchase the land. It was his thought to get control of the land first, and then put together a plan for developing the park. Milligan's first "ask" was to Wendal Whipp, President of Monarch Machine Tool Company. After hearing Milligan's idea, Whipp wrote a check for the $15,000 on the spot and said, Bill, go buy the land and then go to the others for their money and let's get this project started. And he did just that! The names of those original park supporters represent the Who’s Who of Sidney at the time; names like Amos, Ferguson, Meyer, Wagner and Willman to name a few. Each of those first 15 supporters has an area of the park named after them. Milligan’s Glen is a 20 acre addendum to the park that was donated by the Milligan’s in 1966.
Back then we had no parks in our home town of Ft. Loramie, but fortunately we did have nearby Lake Loramie. Canal Park along Main Street in Ft. Loramie was still a canal before it was filled in during the 1950’s. And of course we had Bender’s Park, but it was just a treed area surrounding a dance hall where everyone parked who attended functions in the hall. We had the ball park and adjacent playground next to the high school, but it just wasn’t the same as a nice neighborhood park like those in place around town today, thanks in large part to similar civic-minded leaders in Ft. Loramie.
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