There’s always that first sign which kind of got you started. You hadn’t ever noticed it before, on your casual route to and from point A to point B. But there it had been all along. Tall, broad and usually with some sort of official emblem or a Greek looking filligree that made it look old and staunchly official. Without much warning, you pull over and come to a screeching halt (typically scaring the crud out of your passenger or other motorists) while spinning your car into a jaunty “I meant to do that” kind of angle.

The signage had lots of writing and as you read it you slowly start to realize that it’s describing something which happened, right here, on the ground you’re standing. And it’s pretty cool sounding, too. Some battle between dimly recognizable generals or local leaders. Names that, in your time and place, are now attached to cities and counties nearby.

“Whoa, I think the city of Hamilton was actually named after a dude they called Hamilton,” you muse. “They died right over there,” or, “Her family used to own the land all around here.”

And just like that, you never want to skip reading one of these roadside historical markers again. It’s like pull-tabs or those ever-repressive online slide-shows where every 2 sentences of the article it requires you to load the “Next Page”. And you just keep clicking…and clicking…and pulling over…and pulling over.

I can remember the first one that really grabbed my attention. It was just off the road on our way to John Bryan State Park, in rural Ohio. The sign was kind of tucked away on a little pull-off, with a sloping hill in the background. It described the capture of an old mountain man named Simon Kenton, near the ancient Shawnee capital of Chillicothe. On that spot, Kenton had been forced to run “the gauntlet”, a ritual torture whereby the captured person must run a 1/2 mile stretch of ground to the Chief’s hut, naked and flanked on each side by a long line of Native American men, women and children who would pummel him with anything they could get their hands on.

Kenton had already run the gauntlet 6 or 7 times at this point and, while having already tried to escape several times, this time he was finally able to grab a war hammer from some hapless woman in the line. He used it to pummel his way through the wall of people and dashed into the underbrush, buck naked and wild as a mad boar. Though later captured, he evaded his pursuers for several days, and only submitted after one of them knocked a hole in his skull with a war club. But he survived to run 3 more guantlets, eventually winding up in Detroit some 230 miles away.

Seriously.

Dude busted his way through a line of angry braves, outran them through the forest and managed to live for several days, naked, before finally stopping after getting a hole punched in his head. He was seriously that gnarly of a guy. I mean, how do you sleep naked in the woods without going crazy in the first hour? Bugs, man. Bugs, everywhere.

You can see how this kind of amazing discovery can entrap a person. It’s like the poor deluded individuals who actually win something the first time the go in the casino. They’re convinced lightning will strike twice, if they just keep pulling.

And like the poor gambler, I just keep pulling…my car over for every stupid historical marker I see. It was so amazing that one time, like the coolest thing had happened, right there, and I never would have known it if i hadn’t pulled over to read the sign. But, truth be told, it’s hardly ever been as cool as that first time.

Which brings me to the point of my diatribe; what self-respecting historian did the state government find who would be willing to put up markers like the following?

Text of Marker Reads:
Nearby stood Penny’s (Penney’s) Tavern, named for Lincefield Penney who purchased the site in 1811. The tavern catered to travelers making their way to old Spotsylvania Courthouse site (1781-1837), located approximately one mile north of the tavern site across the Po River. After the Court House burned in 1837 and was moved to its present location, business greatly declined. By 1840 the property was sold to Mansfield Wigglesworth who operated a tavern there called Wigglesworth Tavern. The tavern was closed by the outbreak of the Civil War. The intersection where the tavern once stood was known as Penny’s Crossroads into the twentieth century.

Notice the problem with this little gem? IT’S COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT TO ANYONE BUT LINCEFIELD PENNEY AND HIS DESCENDANTS! Or maybe the Wigglesworth family, who already has long ago decided to get rid of their horrible Dickensian name because they were tired of the neighborhood kids coming up to the door and wriggling all over the place yelling, “How much is this worth?!”

Seriously, why would you think this was worth putting up on a big metal sign that draws poor, obsessed history-types to fling their cars off the side of the road? What kind of sicko thinks that’s a good idea? Maybe the local law enforcement sees it as a good way to thin out slower drivers who are always looking for these things. Put them all over the place, and you’ll probably get a .7% efficiency increase in that part of the transportation grid.

Whatever the reasoning, these things drive me crazy. More often than not, they don’t even pertain to anything interesting that I already knew had happened nearby. The marker about Penny’s Tavern? Yea, that was placed less than a couple miles away from the Civil War battlefield sites of Spotsylvania and Fredericksburg. Seriously, couldn’t you have found something  even remotely connected to those events?

Apparently not.

Wigglesworth it is. Thanks for nothing, Mr. Historical Marker.

*To check out your local historical markers, and maybe to prevent near-accidents in the future, try looking them up on this site from the safety of your home. www.historicalmarkerproject.com