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Along the Towpath, A Journalist Rediscovers the Ohio & Erie Canal. By Al Simpson. ( Akron , OH : The University of Akron Libraries, 2003. 248 pp. $29.95, ISBN 0-9743507-0-2.
Along the Towpath, A Journalist Rediscovers the Ohio & Erie Canal is an interesting read in that it documents the development of the Ohio and Erie Canal Corridor from its embryonic stages until the canal lands were “saved” by local government units when the state of Ohio chose to divest itself of the responsibility for these historic lands. The story could easily be dismissed as an esoteric bonding of two men who shared a passion for the preservation of the Ohio and Lake Erie Canal in Stark County , Ohio . Their mission started innocently enough when a local politician invited a reporter from the Canton Repository to join him on a hike from Canal Fulton to Navarre along the banks of the canal in Stark County . The rest is history.
The local politician was Ralph Regula, Navarre, Ohio, Village Solicitor, who progressed from the local level to the state legislature and ultimately into the United States Congress as a Representative for Stark County. At each of these political levels, Regula was able to nurture his dream for the preservation and restoration of the Ohio and Lake Erie Canal . Without the help of an able propagandist, Regula's dream could well have withered on the vine with the morning sun. His hiking companion, who was soon to become this propagandist, was Canton Repository reporter Al Simpson.
In a sense, Regula patterned his hike along the Ohio and Lake Erie Canal after one taken a few years earlier by United States Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas who sought to prevent the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal from falling victim to the interstate highway system. Douglas almost single-handedly prevented the C & O Canal from passing into oblivion.
Reporter Simpson, a man with more than twenty years of journalistic experience, obviously felt Regula's intense passion to preserve and protect the Ohio & Lake Erie Canal lands from commercial development by private parties. From the outset, Regula had a vision of a park with the canal as its central element that would cater to a wide range of interests - hiking, biking, canoeing, horseback riding, fishing, providing a place for family picnics, and educating a young public to the importance of the canal in the lives of earlier generations of Ohioans. The spark ignited on that rainy day would gradually spread from Lake Erie 's southern shore to the Ohio River 's northern bank.
In the Prologue Simpson writes, “Stark County was where it all began . . . and the man who . . . shepherded his dream from conception to birth is Congressman Ralph Regula . . . In my first article about the canal, I wrote these words about Ralph: ‘He looks beyond the borders of Stark County and envisions a continuous 309-mile hiking trail along a restored towpath from Lake Erie to the Ohio River.' Today, such a trail is well advanced due to the work of volunteers and local governments from north to south.”
When the state decided to divest itself of the canal lands which it had owned since 1825, the law stipulated that those lands must first be offered to the municipalities, townships or counties where the land was situated. If any of these entities requested title to the canal lands, the state was obligated to transfer the land at no cost to the receiving governmental entity. When no governmental unit requested the land the state was free to sell that land to private individuals.
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