Learn about Galion
The Brown’s and Bradford’s:
Digital Archives
GALION CITY DIRECTORIES
1875-76 • 1896 • 1910 • 1918 • 1924-25 • 1927 • 1935 • 1940
GALION HIGH SCHOOL SPYS
1898 • 1909 • 1910 • 1911 • 1924 • 1933 • 1934 • 1974
GALION JUNIOR HIGH CUB
The Galion History Center’s digital archives are brought to you by the Ralph Boyd Foundation who helped fund a one-year digitization project of our City Directories, Spys, Cubs, and historic paperwork.
*Please be aware that the entirety of our digitized collection does not appear on our website due to file size issues. If you aren’t finding the year you are looking for, please inquire about your search!
Kid’s Corner
1906 Steam Engine
Have you visited our Hayden Helfrich Annex? On display is the 1906 Galion Steam Engine that was used by the Galion Fire Department to fight fires. This steam engine weighs 6,800 pounds and is 115 years old!
Steam pumpers were used between 1840-1920s and were pulled by horses! Below is a photo of the Galion steam pumper in action on Harding Way c.1920!
Steam Pumper STATS:
Length: 12 feet 11 inches – 23 feet 4 inches with pole!
Height: 9 feet- 3 inches
Weight: 6,800 lbs
On average, steam pumpers could pump 700 gallons of water per minute!
Watch Mrs. Wegesin read a story about Hercules the Steam Engine!
The Ericofon – The North Electric Company!
In 1940 a Swedish design team came up with a concept for a special kind of rotary phone! It was a handheld phone with a rotary dial on the bottom! The design was definitely unique! The North Electric Company in Galion, Ohio manufactured the “Ericofon” for the North American market. Some nicknamed the phone the “cobra” phone because it looked like a cobra snake! How cool that this phone was built right in Galion, Ohio!
This style phone became widely popular and was available in many different colors – even clear and metallic! Fun Fact -The Ericofon was never produced in the color black! The Ericofon has been featured in many different movies and TV shows over the years!
If you visit the Galion History Center museum you can see and play with an old Ericofon and compare it to today’s mobile smartphones!
Brownella Cottage Virtual Field Trip
Brownella Cottage is a historic home, built in 1887, that is owned by the Galion History Center. It once belonged to Bishop and Ella Brown and was given to the Galion History Center after they passed away. Today, Brownella Cottage is still filled with their furniture and belongings and helps us understand how people in Galion lived in the past. The Brownella Cottage Carriage house has been turned into a Galion history museum and gift shop!
Can’t visit Brownella Cottage in person? No problem! Below is a link to our Virtual Brownella Cottage Field Trip playlist! This tour is kid friendly and was originally filmed during the height of the COVID 19 pandemic when the Galion History Center was unable to host their scheduled field trips!
The Galion Iron Works
The Galion Iron Works Company of Galion, Ohio, was founded by David Charles Boyd and his three brothers in 1907. In its early years, the Galion Iron Works produced a wide range of road-building and other construction equipment, such as drag scrapers, plows, wagons, stone unloaders, rock crushers, and a variety of other machines! At the Galion History Center Annex, you can visit and see a road grader and a 1922 11 – ton steam roller! The slogan of the Galion Iron Works was “All roads lead to Galion” because their road building machinery has truly been used to build roadways all over the world!
The “Galion Graders”
A grader, also commonly referred to as a road grader, motor grader, or simply a blade, is a form of heavy equipment with a long blade that creates a pathway and flat surface so that a roadway can be built. Road graders were pulled by horses before the more modern motorized graders were invented. “Grading” is often the first step in building a road and one of the most popular pieces of equipment the Galion Iron Works is known for! Fun Fact: In 1955 the Galion Irons Works created the Galion T-700 road grader. It was the world’s largest road grader at the time and it weighed over 40,000lbs!
You can see tributes to the Galion Iron Works and its success all over Galion!
Our collegiate baseball team is called the “Galion Graders” for the Galion Iron Works road “graders”!
Heise Park
Our new park equipment in Heise Park was made to look like road graders and steam rollers from the Galion Iron Works! Have you played at this park, yet?