The stone stairway climbing out of the Rock House gorge is a working museum piece: each step was hand-cut from the sandstone cliff in the nineteen thirties by Company five twenty-six of the Civilian Conservation Corps, one of Ohio's Black CCC companies, based at Camp Logan. The company also blazed the loop trail, built the stone bridge and safety walls, and raised picnic shelters from blight-killed American chestnut. Tool marks remain visible on many step edges, and the masonry has carried hikers for some ninety years. The climb is steep but short, ending near the picnic shelter that now occupies the site of an eighteen thirties hotel. It is one of the most tangible pieces of Depression-era history anywhere in the park.
Before you start up, put your hand flat on the edge of one of these stone steps. Feel the tool marks? Those cuts are older than your grandparents. Every stair on this climb was carved from the living cliff in the nineteen thirties by Company five twenty-six of the Civilian Conservation Corps — and their story deserves telling straight. The Corps was segregated in those years, and Company five twenty-six was one of Ohio's Black companies: young men stationed at Camp Logan from nineteen thirty-four to nineteen thirty-seven, sons of families hit hard by the Depression, most of every paycheck sent home. Here at Rock House they cut these steps from the sandstone, blazed the loop trail you've been walking, built the stone bridge and the safety walls, and raised picnic shelters from American chestnut trees the blight had killed — putting even the forest's losses to work. That handiwork has now carried visitors for ninety years and counting. You're standing on it. One line for the wider picture: across these hills, the Corps planted some three hundred thousand trees. The forest you drove through to get here? Now you know who set it. For decades, almost nobody told this company's story. It's told here now, every time somebody climbs these stairs. Up top, the shelter house by the lot stands right where Colonel Rempel's old hotel once did — one century's handiwork resting beside another's. Take the climb slow, and let every step count for the men who cut it.