All Bluffton Icon News

By Fred Steiner
www.BlufftonForever.com

If this doesn’t frighten you, nothing will. The Village of Bluffton (and probably many, many other municipalities), used DDT for over 20 years to kill mosquitoes. Here’s the account from the May 28, 1953, Bluffton News.

Bluffton’s annual war on mosquitoes was launched this week under the direction of Mayor Wilbur A. Howe, as work got underway on a control program, which has proved extremely successful over the last two decades.

Frequent rainfall, which has kept streams moving, preventing the accumulation of pools of stagnant water, has made control spraying unnecessary until this week, the mayor said.

During the normal summer of treatment of Bluffton’s streams, parts of quarries, the village dump, etc., the control required about 50 gallons of DDT and approximately 1,000 gallons of oil.

Click HERE for the rest of the story.

By Liz Gordon-Hancock

Over a dozen community members gathered this past Wednesday, March 8, on the third floor of Town Hall for a Bluffton historical group meeting.

Newly-elected president Ron Epp led attendees through a business discussion covering the creation of by laws and an official name of the group. The general consensus of the group was the word "society" doesn't carry the same relevance that it used to, so the group is exploring alternative names. Sub-committees have been created to work on drafting by laws and to come up with potential names for the group.

The group/society/club hopes to visit various museums in the area once a month to gather data on how others have established museums. All are welcome to tag along. This month, a few people visited the Delphos Canal Museum and reported their observations on the exhibits.

The evening finished with a short presentation by Ron Epp of his collection of antique measuring tools, including sliding or folding rulers used by carpenters and engineers before the invention of the tape measure.

This group meets every second Wednesday of the month on the third floor of Town Hall, at 7 p.m. and is open to anyone interested. Next month's meeting with include a presentation by Keith Sommer of telephones and locks, including pieces from his extensive collection.

The next meeting is April 12.

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