This small town in the state of Ohio began as a farming community in the covered wagon days, being notable for the construction of the Milan Canal, built to avoid traversing the inhospitable plains and instead sail regionally produced goods as far as New York City. In more modern times, the town rings a bell when brought up due to the fact that one of the most famous inventors in American history, Thomas Edison, was born here.
The house where the inventor of the light bulb was born on February 11th, 1847 is now open as a museum. The prolific inventor lived in Milan for the first 7 years of his life before moving with his family to Port Huron, Michigan. But it was Milan’s second most famous feat that brought the town to prosperity; the Milan Canal became the foremost way to ship harvests to far away places and the village became one of the busiest ports in the entire Great Lakes region. With the advent of railroads and their speedier delivery times, the canal lost its domination of the shipping trade.
It’s the fact that the railroads stole the canal shipping business of Milan that caused the town to essentially stop growing in the 1860s. This has left the town in a state of excellent preservation, since it missed out on the post-civil war economic boom that saw many other Midwestern cities expanding and throwing up new buildings.
Highlights
Thomas Alva Edison’s house: the small brick home on a hillside where one of the most brilliant American inventors of all time lived is now open as a museum.
The Milan Canal: see what brought the village its early fortune and what the rail networks made redundant.
Milan Historical Museum: the town’s past is outlined at this small museum, worth a look to understand what you’re looking at once back on the street.