Once home to the powerful Wyandotte Nation, Wyandot County emerged from lands surrounding the Grand Reserve. The landscape has evolved dramatically, from the backbreaking work of draining marshland to the creation of solar farms centuries later. The Mission Church, Indian Mill and Colonel Crawford Monument link the county to its rich heritage, and the Lincoln Highway connects it with the rest of the nation. The county has played host to General William Harrison, President Rutherford Hayes, Charles Dickens, Medal of Honor recipient Cyrus Sears and Neil Armstrong. Author Ronald I. Marvin Jr. explores several thousand years of Wyandot history from its earliest inhabitants to the set of the Shawshank Redemption.

An award-winning author chronicles the settling of the Ohio River Valley, home to the defiant Shawnee Indians, who vow to defend their land against the seemingly unstoppable. They came on foot and by horseback, in wagons and on rafts, singly and by the score, restless, adventurous, enterprising, relentless, seeking a foothold on the future. European immigrants and American colonists, settlers and speculators, soldiers and missionaries, fugitives from justice and from despair—pioneers all, in the great and inexorable westward expansion defined at its heart by the majestic flow of the Ohio River. This is their story, a chronicle of monumental dimension, of resounding drama and impact set during a pivotal era in our history: the birth and growth of a nation. Drawing on a wealth of research, both scholarly and anecdotal—including letters, diaries, and journals of the era—Allan W. Eckert has delivered a landmark of historical authenticity, unprecedented in scope and detail.