Ohio’s First Capital at a Crossroads

State capitals often have a corporate feel about them. I’ve found the same thing in former state capitals also, like Milledgeville, GA and Vandalia, IL. Last week I was in Chillicothe, OH, the first state capital of Ohio, and noted the same thing.

When Ohio became a state in 1803, Chillicothe was chosen as the first state capital, until it was later moved to Columbus. The Ohio-Erie Canal construction in 1831 passed thru the town and the construction of the Marietta and Cincinnati Railroad made Chillicothe a transportation center. An early settler Colonel Daniel Mead purchased a paper making plant that eventually became the Mead Corporation, now Mead Westvaco. Mead has dominated the town ever since.

Mead Westvaco at one time had 3,000 employees in the town of 21,000. Today it is down to 1,700 and is at risk of falling further. Both local plants and numerous corporate jobs were thrown up in the air when the fine paper division was recently sold to Cerberus Capital Management, a New York City leveraged buyout firm. Cash flow orientated firms like Cerberus tend to cut expenses to the bone. Mead’s research division with 125 high paid jobs in town is probably most at risk.

Other big employers in town with over 1,000 employees each are a Kenworth Truck Plant, the local hospital, two prisons and a VA hospital. Marvin Jones, head of the Chillicothe/Ross Chamber of Commerce told me, “This has always been a company town. Mead and some of the others have always been big drivers locally.”

Unfortunately, as I’ve seen in my travels, you can no longer safely build a local economy around government or big corporate employers. Tomorrow: Chillicothe’s future.