CLARK COUNTY AG HISTORY COMPILED FOR FTD
Thursday, June 23rd, 2005 -- 8:15 AM
Farm Technology Days will only last three days, but the information gathered for the Clark County Ag History display will be useful well past the show?s end.Donna Odeen, Danny Meyer and Dave Von Ruden have been working on the display. Odeen says they've gathered more information then they?ll be able use for one display, so they plan on donating everything to local historical societies for future reference. Clark County is known as a ?dairy? county ? but its first ag-based industry was lumbering.
"The lumber barons were the ones that were largely responsible for settling the area," Odeen explains. "Clark County provided the lumber for building Cornell University in New York."
Odeen says old books were a great source of information. She found one book published in the 1890?s that served as a marketing tool to encourage people to move here.
The committee is hopeful county residents will get involved with the project.
"If people have pictures they'd like to share, (they can) get a copy of that and bring that to the history tent on the Tuesday of the show, we'd be more than glad to display it," Odeen encourages.
The researchers were somewhat surprised to find how little Clark County?s population ? which is just about 35,000 ? has changed over the years. In fact, the population spiked around 1920. It?s actually declined a bit since then. The display and all the information that the committee has gathered will be given to the Loyal Historical Society after the show.
Feel free to contact us with questions and/or comments.