With the City of Portsmouth as your gateway, explore two-thousand years of human and natural history in the Shawnee State Forest Region of Scioto and Adams counties. With its misty hollows, forested ridges, and rolling hills and its spring wildflowers and dramatic fall colors, the region has become known as Ohio’s Little Smokies. Its history stretches from the time of prehistoric Native Americans who built the Portsmouth Earthworks Complex over two-thousand years ago to more recent historical…

Southern Ohio, in the minds of many Americans, was part of a larger "Promised Land," whose settlement followed quickly on the heels of the United States' victory over the alliance of Indian nations at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794. The Treaty of Ft. Greenville ceded Shawnee, Miami, and other Indian land claims to two-thirds of the future state of Ohio and officially opened the pioneer era of the Scioto Valley. From the campaigns of Dunmore's War in 1774 through those of the Northwest…

Covering the years 1730 through the War of 1812, this tour explores the history of Native American efforts to defend their homeland, first, from the encroachments of the French and English colonial empires, and, second, from those of the new American Republic. This is the story of the conquest of the Scioto Valley and the larger region of the Trans-Appalachian West, what is sometimes called the "First West." From Celeron’s Expedition in 1749 to Tecumseh in the War of 1812, the Shawnee and…

Explore the history depicted in Portsmouth’s famous floodwall murals. This tour covers some 2,000 years of history at the confluence of the Scioto and Ohio Rivers, from the ancient Adena and Hopewell to the workers at Williams Shoe factory in downtown Portsmouth. Explore in more detail some of the history depicted in Robert Dafford’s epic Portsmouth Floodwall Murals. The history of human settlement at the Mouth of the Scioto has always been shaped by the rise and fall of flood waters. Over…

Explore the history of the Beneh Abraham Jewish congregation of Portsmouth, Ohio, what is recognized as the third oldest Jewish community in Ohio. Learn how Beneh Abraham was formed in the late 1850s and discover its contributions to the development of the City of Portsmouth. This tour visits explores the Jewish community's history through visiting the locations of the congregation's historic places of worship, along with the Hebrew Section of Greenlawn Cemetery. Complete the tour in person or…