Ohio's Small Town Museum in Ashville, Ohio

With travel nonexistent, the summer of 2020 was devastating for tiny institutions which usually operate on an ever-shrinking budget, rely on donations or grants to stay afloat, and run with a skeleton crew of volunteers. Some literally have trouble leaving the lights on. But each of these museums, no matter how spartan, tells the story of that particular community. They're vital to the survival of specific histories. They represent a sense of place. These sites also serve as important reminders of our beatific and ugly past, and in their survival it’s important for current and future curators to rethink what they are tasked to preserve and display. Ohio’s Small Town Museum in Ashville has just about everything one could want from these museums under one roof. There is culture, innovation, controversy, myth and oddities of the onetime boomtown turned forgotten outpost in Pickaway County’s rural expanse. There are lots of these types of museums all over the country, but nothing is quite like this collection in Ashville. By 1975 the railroad depot had closed, there was no newspaper, no industry, and a University of Cincinnati study showed that Ashville had one of the lowest community…

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