Greenville Culture

Greenville’s culture is that of a western Ohio farming town, with two national stories attached.

The Annie Oakley collection

The Garst Museum holds what is by a wide margin the largest collection of her material anywhere — guns, shooting costumes she made herself, medals, correspondence, and objects from the Wild West show years. What comes across is less the legend than the person: a woman who shot to keep her family off the county poor farm, negotiated her own contracts, taught thousands of women to shoot, and spent her later life on charity work.

Lowell Thomas

The broadcaster and traveller who made T. E. Lawrence famous was born in Darke County, and the museum holds his papers and artefacts.

The county fair

The Great Darke County Fair is among the largest in Ohio and is genuinely an agricultural event rather than a funfair with livestock attached; junior exhibitors, harness racing and the sale of market animals are the core of it.

Plain communities

Amish and Old Order Mennonite farms in the county, with produce auctions and furniture workshops.

Music and the square

Summer concerts on the courthouse lawn, a restored 1940s cinema and a community theatre give the town more evening life than its size suggests, and the First Friday evenings on the main street have been part of the downtown’s recovery.

The gum wall

Customers at the Maid-Rite sandwich shop have been pressing their chewing gum into the brick beside the door since at least the 1930s, and the accumulated layer is now several centimetres thick and startlingly colourful. It is unhygienic, entirely voluntary and a genuine local landmark that people photograph.