One of the surest signs of Spring is the removal of the Jet Express from drydock, and its readying for the upcoming season of Lake Erie island-hopping.  This event recently took place, and the boat is undergoing its annual maintenance in Port Clinton before its official launch on May 1.

In honor of this news, we share with you a story from our archives - this was originally published on MyHometownOhio in May of 2007.

Ask any Ohioan to choose the most historic small town in Ohio, and you are bound to get a different answer – likely depending on the section of the state he or she calls home. Each section has its own “favorites,” those places which, in addition to one’s own hometown, are held in high esteem.

If you were, however, to objectively choose the most historic town in a given area – such as entire state – how would you go about that task? This was the question asked by owners of ePodunk, a website dedicated to promoting the “power or place” in American communities. In addition to the site’s regular fare of descriptions and data on thousands of places across the country, the site recently set out to define the most historic small towns in America … and the most historic in each state.

To accomplish this mission, site owners used four criteria – the number of individual listings on the National Register of Historic Places, the size of any existing National Register Historic Districts, the average age of housing, and the use of the Federal Rehabilitation Tax Credit.

Ohio’s winner? It might surprise you. It is…. Kellys Island in Lake Erie.  The two runners-up were Casstown (Miami County) and Zanesville.

Kellys Island is indeed a scenic and historic place. Kellys boasts two individual listings on the National Register of Historic Places, the Louis Beatty House (1851) and Inscription Rock – and it is also the location for two National Register Historic Districts. The first, the South Shore District, was created in 1975, and includes 31 buildings on 230 acres. The second and largest, the Kellys Island Historic District, was added in 1988, and includes 284 buildings, 17 structures and 5 objects in an area of 28,880 acres.

All of this, mind you, on an island that had 367 permanent residents in the 2000 census. In 1900, the island actually had 2,000 permanent residents; the number of seasonal residents now exceeds 3,000.

A good way to delve into the history of Kellys Island is to visit the website of the Kellys Island Historical Association, an organization housed in the island’s 1865 “Old Stone Church."

Photo: Old Stone Church, Kellys Island - gregjsmith/Creative Commons License