Erie Pennsylvania

Having never been there, we headed to Erie Pennsylvania, where the slogan is “Were Erie-sistable!” While it was nice enough, I am not sure the slogan is warranted. We spent most of the day in Presque Isle State Park. Presque Isle was the location of French fort established in 1753 – Fort De La Presqu’lle. Today it is a wonderful park on a spit of land across from downtown Erie, creating a massive bay that served the locals as a major port on Lake Erie. The spit is so narrow in most places that you can walk from the shores of Lake Erie with water as far as the eye can see, to the shores on the bay with views of Erie itself.

In the Park we found one of the many lighthouses that dot the shores of the Great Lakes. Since ocean going vessels ply the Great Lakes, lighthouses have been here since the early 1800’s. Lake Erie alone has over 2,000 sunken ships on its floor. The estimate is that the Great Lakes in total were the site of more than 25,000 shipwrecks. Lake Erie, while the smallest of the Great Lakes, has so many shipwrecks because it is also the shallowest.

We learned about Oliver Hazard Perry, an American Naval Commander. Perry led the Battle of Lake Erie against the Brits during the War of 1812. On September 10, 1813 he engaged a squadron of the Royal Navy. After a grueling battle which the Brits thought they had won several times, Perry sunk several, and then captured six ships of the Royal Navy.  He is remembered for having said to his friend Captain James Lawrence “Don’t give up the ship!” and he emblazoned those word on his battle flag. A monument on Presque Isle commemorates his heroic accomplishments.

We started to head toward Akron and were surprised by a surprise we didn’t expect. In Mentor Ohio is Lawnfield, the farm owned by President James Garfield. We spotted a sign saying the Garfield Historic Site at the next exit. Figuring out it was only a couple miles off I-90, we headed there. It must be that we are in some kind of assassinated President vortex – first McKinley now Garfield – but we actually visited his on September 19 – the actual date that he died from the shot in the back delivered by Charles J. Guteau.

While Garfield served only some 275 days, we learned a lot of things that he would have been known for. He was the last American President to be born in a log cabin. He was the first President to campaign from the front porch of Lawnfield – many would follow him in this practice. We learned what it means when candidates “stump” – in the 1800’s when a candidate wanted to speak to large crowds, he often went to a large field near town. They would cut down a tree in order to give the candidate an elevated place to speak from – on the stump. We also learned that essentially Garfield had the first presidential library – the farm remained in the family until the early 1960’s. The family agreed to donate the home with all its furnishings to the government if they created a museum out of it. For that reason, nearly 90% of the interior furnishings were those of James and Lucretia Garfield. This unexpected gem was awesome!

Talk to you soon.