Garrettsville, Ohio

Garrettsville began with a mill and a dare. In eighteen oh three, Colonel John Garrett purchased three hundred acres along Silver Creek in what was then the wilderness of Trumbull County, Ohio. He and his family arrived in July of eighteen oh four, built cabins, and immediately set to work on an earthen dam and sawmill.

The grist mill opened in January of eighteen oh six, and within weeks Colonel Garrett died, leaving his wife and sons to run the operation. The mill drew pioneers from townships twenty miles in every direction, walking through old-growth forest to grind their grain. A village grew around the creek, was incorporated in eighteen sixty-four, and took the family name.

Today around twenty-four hundred people live in this Portage County village built on the ambition of a single mill.