Medina & Medina County, Ohio
Excerpt from a past edition of OhioTraveler
Nestled in Northeast Ohio’s Western Reserve region, Medina County offers natural and manmade features to fit everyone’s interests. With close proximity to Cleveland and Akron, the area provides a unique pairing of “small-town atmosphere with big-city flavor”. There are small towns with unique architecture, town centers with gazebos, wonderful retail, outlets, and great dining. Drive by wide-open spaces, including farmland, woods, rolling hills, lakes, streams, ledges, and even the continental divide runs through Medina County.
Medina County is blessed with many wonderful parks that offer swimming, hiking, fishing, shelters, sports fields, an environmental center for education, and many wonderful programs for all ages to enjoy. It even has the Cleveland Metroparks jewel – the Hinckley Reservation.
Unique to Medina County is the Buckin’ Ohio Bull Riding Rodeos, Stone Carvings in the ledges, and colorful histories such as the Seville Giants and Victorian Architecture.
The rural countryside offers beautiful scenic drives all year long, especially in the fall, to see the changing colors. While traveling in Medina County, you may pass by small and large alpaca, horse, dairy, grain, berry, and/or tree farms. Past orchards, mills, garden centers, parks, farm markets, a winery, and petting farms. Come out for an exciting Sunday drive, especially in the fall, for the beautiful colors and the drive-it-yourself Fall Foliage Tour.
If shopping is something that you take pleasure in, Medina County offers unique retail stops, outlets, farmers’ markets, antiques, second-hand and consignment shops, food, art, furnishing, and gifts, just to name a few. Check out a very specialized shop, the Log Cabin Shop, for Early American merchandise and re-enactment supplies. The city of Medina is home to Root Candles at West Liberty.
Local history is accented with museums, the Medina Toy & Train Museum, the Little Wiz Fire Museum, Silchuck Farm Museum, and the Northern Ohio Railway Museum. Historical societies in Medina County offer unique sites, an 1850’s farm in Brunswick, a one-room schoolhouse in York Township, a Victorian home in Medina, and Worden Ledges stone carvings in Hinckley (Cleveland Metroparks).
Medina County also has many festivals and events that take place throughout the year, offering fun entertainment for the whole family.
In February, there is the Medina Ice Festival; May is the Medina Chalk Art; Wadsworth Herb & Craft Festival; June is Seville’s Largest Yard Sale; Wadsworth Blue Tip Festival and Brunswick Old Fashioned Days, July has the Lodi Sweet Corn Festival, August is the Valley City Frog Jump, Medina International Fest, and, of course, the Medina County Fair with rides, entertainment, programs, farm animals and agriculture.
September is the Johnny Appleseed Festival at Mapleside Farms and Walk with Spirits of the Past, October the Medina County Fall Foliage Tour takes place, and November brings the Candlelight Walk and Christmas in the Colonies.
Also featured in Medina County are a number of wonderful arts programs; Art-in-the-Park, Arts Week in July, free concerts by community bands, Jazz Under the Stars, Concerts Over the Valley, and Rally in the Alley throughout the summer, and there are a multitude of theatre productions, Shakespeare community, and school productions.
Visit Medina County at www.visitmedinacounty.com.
