09/10/2025
What an exciting day! Yesterday we had the honor of being part of the ribbon cutting ceremony at the new Lake Loramie State Park Welcome Center!
If/when you get the chance to take a tour of the beautiful new visitor center, just know that the wooden displays created in the center were from vintage pine wood sourced right here in Fort Loramie! So local that it in fact came directly from a wall we took down inside of our building in downtown Fort Loramie. We LOVE to repurpose beautiful old wood, perhaps one would say, preserve it's heritage! 😉 And while multiple displays were created for the center from this wood, we can only claim the creation of the Trading Post as our own work.
While we have done some digging on the past history of our building, this what we know for sure:
👉Our building is actually a hodge-podge of four buidlings built on to each other.
👉 We believe the center/longest building of our whole building is the oldest section currently as it has a flagstone foundation and large hewn timber supports that are only visible from inside our basement.
👉 The oldest/original storefront photo we have found dates to 1815, and was the "Inderieden Hardware". At this time, the storefront resembled a style close to that of the Brew Bank front, and we believe this structure succumbed to a fire at some point.
👉 The current storefront, we have a picture of being constructed dating around 1946, by the Dapore family, and our current front building has a very old poured concrete foundation, so we believe it is newer then the center building.
👉 We are not really sure of the time frame when the lean to office or steel-sided section of the building were added on, but they have newer poured concrete and cinderblock foundations.
👉 The wall we took down to expand our shop was between the center original building and the office room, and the wood we removed was in fantastic shape after being preserved as an interior wall for so long despite being an exterior wall originally! There used to be a sawmill in town, and it would be really neat to know if it was milled right here in town as well!
👉 Now for some extra fun! When we tore down the wall we found an old "Henry C. Hart" Matchless Repeater BB Gun between the old studs. While not in mint condition, we wonder if some poor child dropped it between a wall opening and then lost it forever due to the "balloon style" construction of the building and the studs running the entire height of the building, which is a good 20-30' tall.
😲 These brass and cast iron bb guns were manufactured in 1890 in Detroit, Michigan, meaning the center section of the building is definitely that old, if not older in order for it to be holding a gun of that vintage.
👉With all that being said, we took down some old walls, found some neat history, and have been able to share a piece of our history in the new visitor center to continue to educate the future generations about the history of Fort Loramie!
And we think that is pretty cool!! So get on out the park and see the new center for yourself!
P.S. We also know a pretty cool in-house geologist who spent a lot of time on the text/info/ideas for the Ice Age Geology displays!
