February 25, 2019

Some pretty amazing things have been invented by engineers all across our company’s territory – many of them are national historic landmarks of mechanical, civil and chemical engineering. Regardless where you are, there’s an engineering landmark near you. Here are just a few within easy reach of company locations.

Minutes away from our Akron offices is the Goodyear Airdock. A designated Historic Civil Engineering Landmark, it was the largest open-space building in the world when completed in 1929.

Another Historic Civil Engineering landmark, the Ohio Canal System, is now a popular Akron area hiking trail. But the complex system of canals, bridges and dams once totaled over 1,015 miles in length and was one of the greatest civil engineering feats of the early 1800s.

The University of Akron was selected for the Historic Chemical Landmark designation commemorating Akron’s development of synthetic rubber.

The world’s first gravimetric coal feeder, essential to large coal-fired boilers for the generation of electricity, is on display in nearby Cleveland as a Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark.

Just a few miles from the Fort Martin Power Station is West Virginia’s Mason-Dixon Historical Park, which commemorates the achievement of surveyors Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, who surveyed the line to resolve a border dispute between the Penn and the Calvert families, founders of Pennsylvania and Maryland, respectively. The Mason-Dixon Line is a Historic Civil Engineering Landmark and a terminal marker identifies the point where Mason and Dixon completed their survey in 1767.

The Beaver Valley Power Station occupies the site of a Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark – the Shippingport Atomic Power Station. Six miles away, in East Liverpool, Ohio, is the Point of Beginning of the Geographer’s Line, a Historic Civil Engineering Landmark, and the geographer’s survey point from which all townships in 30 states were surveyed beginning in 1785 when the point was established.

When driving the path of the National Road, you’ll cross a significant portion of our territory. Starting in Maryland and crossing through West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio, the National Road is a Historic Civil Engineering Landmark: the first interstate road built with federal money in the 1830s. Before its completion the most efficient way to ship goods to the East Coast from Western Pennsylvania and Ohio was down the Ohio River to the Mississippi River, around Florida, and up the Atlantic coast.

Find information about these and many other historic engineering landmarks through these links:

The interior of Akron’s Goodyear Airdock.