Happy Birthday America! In honor of 250 years since 1776, the Ohio Commission for the U.S. Semiquincentennial (America 250) has chosen a different theme each month to highlight and celebrate Ohio’s rich history. Each month, The Dawes Arboretum’s History Team will be dropping a new collection to our archives that align with America and Ohio’s 250th anniversary monthly theme! This month, we’re celebrating Ohio Works: Innovation & Industry, or “innovators, historic and contemporary businesses, and the hard-working people of Ohio past and present.”
“To 'Seek Innovation’ is one of the core values of our organization,” said historian Leslie Wagner. “Our founder, Beman Dawes, was an innovator who understood trees as a living history.”
Beman Dawes, The Arboretum’s co-founder, was an entrepreneur, and founded the Ohio Cities Gas Company with his friend Fletcher Heath. Ohio Cities Gas took over a group of independent firms which supplied natural gas to Columbus, Dayton, and Springfield. In 1917, their company purchased the Pure Oil Company of New Jersey, and, in 1920, it opened the Heath refinery (this is how Heath, Ohio, got its name.)
In 1924, Beman Dawes retired as president and CEO of Pure Oil and moved to the chairman of the board position instead where he remained part of the board’s executive committee until his death in 1953. Shortly after his retirement, he founded The Arboretum in 1929, creating the beautiful landscape that visitors love today.
Because of Beman’s innovation in both industry and conservation, Dawes is part of the Ohio Innovation Trail! The Ohio Innovation Trail is intended to honor key sites in the state that have contributed to innovation and creativity so visitors can learn about Ohio's inventors and their groundbreaking inventions. The Arboretum has partnered with the America 250-Ohio Commission to be an official site on this journey. To find Dawes on the map, visit the Digital Map or the PDF version.
Several photographs of the Heath refinery, Pure Oil stations, the original Board of the Pure Oil Company and more have been digitized and are now available to the public on The Arboretum’s digital archive!
To see these materials, go to the Digital Archive. For questions concerning the digital archive, please email daweshistory@dawesarb.org.
Are you interested in doing in-person research at The Arboretum? Do you have a history question that you can’t find the answer to online? Don’t hesitate to use the Department’s History Research Request Form, where you can get answers to all of your Dawes history-related questions and research requests.