120 years ago in 1905, transcribed as originally published in the Youngstown Vindicator:

In progress. Work on lower lake for Mill Creek Park has been started. Will cover forty-two acres. Dam will be constructed sufficiently strong to resist great weight of water.

Work has begun for the new lower lake for Mill Creek Park. Laborers are engaged in draining the lower lands. Stone cutters and quarrymen are getting out the material for the masonry. It is not thought any cold snap during April will be sufficiently severe to necessitate a suspension of work. The erection of the new dam, the building of new roads above the level of the proposed lake and other work incidental to the construction of Mill Creek’s largest lake is being conducted under the supervision of Volney Rogers, chief of the Mill Creek Park commission.

The new dam will be located, as is pretty generally known, in the Mill Creek narrows, or just where the narrows broaden into the wide valley where the Youngstown Ice Company’s ponds have been located in the past. All of this property has been purchased from the Ice Company, from Thomas H. Wells and others for park purposes. The new lake will cover 42 acres of land. All of it will navigable for boating. In it will be two islands.

Its upper end will be within half a mile of the lower end of Lake Cohasset. Those interested in the project believe the lower lake will be the more popular of the two. It will be larger and for bathing purposes will be warmer. The hills on both sides are not so high, the shade is not so dense, the water with which it will be fed will not be as chilled as that of the other lake and there will not be any cold springs feeding it from the bottom, as is the case with Cohasset.

In speaking of the new lake yesterday Volney Rogers said the builders are devoting their greatest care in making the lower dam of sufficient strength to resist the great weight of the water that will bear down on it. Mr. Rogers suggested the grave calamity that might result from the breaking of this dam. Another Johnstown disaster would result, only on a smaller scale. Within a few years the lowlands about the mouth of Mill Creek will be well built up and the safety of these people demands an absolutely strong wall such as will be provided. The new dam will be completed and the lake formed some time this fall.

Also published in the same issue of the Youngstown Vindicator:

Once again Youngstown boy captures the Cecil Rhodes scholarship at Oxford University. This time it’s Cary R. Alburn, who was graduated from Rayen School – high honors.

Cary R. Alburn, a senior at Adelbert College, has just been notified of his appointment to the Cecil Rhodes scholarship at Oxford University from Ohio, says the Cleveland Plain Dealer…

Alburn was one of three Ohio students from whom a selection for the Oxford scholarship was made last year. The man chosen at that time was George H. Vincent, a Youngstown lad. Alburn, who is now the second to be chosen from the state, is likewise a Youngstown product, and a graduate of the Rayen High School.

The course offered at Oxford is in the nature of a three-year post-graduate course. Each student is allowed for his expenses $300, or about $1,500 a year.

Compiled from the Youngstown Vindicator by Dante Bernard, Mahoning Valley Historical Society Museum educator.