The Richland Album: Hitching Rails

This is the law of time: for every hour we go on there is an hour that slips behind, so that for every bit of gain there is equal loss. In order to enter the future we must relinquish the past.

As each generation creates its own new version of America, the old way, the old style, passes into history, and as each wave of people takes the stage to witness a particular and unique new story, so it watches the putting away of sets and scenery and props from the play just concluded.

This series of photo essays takes a look at landmarks from the past that were once common and familiar components of the landscape to Richlanders long since passed on. A hundred and fifty years ago folks couldn’t really imagine a county without water-powered mills, without covered bridges, without livery stables. Today the only way you have to picture these sights is with our virtual Richland Album.

This collection of pages from the virtual album features Richland County’s hitching rails and hitching posts. For about half of the county’s history no business place could do without them if they wanted folks in carriages, wagons or on horseback to stop there and dismount.

They were a standard feature of every village and town until the decades when automobiles started parking where horses once idled.