Darke County USA 3

Another of the unique small towns located in Darke County is Osgood . This pic shows the exciting skyline of Osgood.One of Osgood's claims to fame is that it is the home of several excellent high school athletes who somehow attend Marion Local instead of Versailles HS. Marion Local is located in nother whole county and also is a huge rival of Versailles . Personally I believe that something is amiss with this deal and that there has been a big coverup of sorts. Hopefully this obvious discrepency will be corrected in the near future.

Near Greenville is a beautiful biking road which I use regularly. Along this road is a sort of scenic cemetary and every time I ride by I think of one of 5 things
1-the purple martin bird
2-a very cool family I met at a campground in Idaho
3-my inlaws by the same name in Toledo
4-that lemonaid stand located under the grandstand at the Great Darke county Fair

5-Chalmer Martin who was one of the grand guys in Versailles

This pic represents one of the enduring mysteries of Darke County. You see Darke county is one of a very few counties of the 3200+ in the USA that are adjoined by 8 other counties. I can not recall the exact number right now but I believe there are only about 10 in this small group.This alone makes Darke County unique.
BUT--what many do not realize is that Darke County should be connected to 9 different counties which would put it in an even rarer circle of USA counties (like maybe less than a half dozen).
If you look at a map you will see that to the north Darke county are the counties of Mercer and Auglaize--and directly to the east is Shelby county. Now all of these 4 counties are basically boxed shaped which in a normal situation would have all 4 coming together at 1 point, much like the 4 corners area of the southwest where Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah meet. In most cases that is the American way of doing things but not so with Darke County. In our situation there is a very thin strip of land that connects Mercer and Shelby county which prevents darke from touching Auglaize. Now this is disturbing because it prevents Darke County from claiming its rightful spot in the list of unique USA counties bordering on 9 other counties--instead of the 8 we now border.

The above pic provides some idea of this bull poop situation. That distance between the Darke -MercerCounty roadsign and the Darke/Auglaize county sign is about 40-50 feet which is the width of that strip that prevents Darke county from bordering Auglaize. I suspect there was some skullduggery taking place when they laid out these county lines. I suspect it was those Mercer County people who are responsibe and are still very openly jealouse of Darke county and its residents.

This is a skyline pic of scenic Webster Ohio located neaar Versailles . The reason I call Webster scenic is because there are a bunch of signs that say so. These signs also say "on the Stillwater" which is the river that runs thru it. I am not entirely sure it is true but I have heard stories that at one time Webster was the alpha village between them and Versailles and was the in place to be but when the railroad was built thru Versailles , Webster became just another pretty (scenic) face in the land of Darke.