Alliance walking tour wins state award

Collaboration efforts between Alliance Historical Society and Alliance Preservation Society are off to an award-winning start.

The first project from the two organizations – the East Main Street Historic District Walking Tour – received an outstanding achievement award from Ohio Local History Alliance at the annual meeting of the statewide organization from Oct. 4-5 in Columbus.

The award, included in the History Outreach Public Programming category, celebrates programs based on their historical and educational value and on their implementation.

Dalton Rininger Kline, Karen Perone and Robb Hyde researched and wrote the descriptions of the downtown buildings. Robb Hyde designed the signs.

The East Main Street Historic District Walking Tour is the first in Alliance to be marked with permanent signs, thanks to the Anthony Lalli Downtown Fund that is managed by the Greater Alliance Foundation.

The self-guided walk features 32 stops along Main and Market streets and runs about 1.5 miles roundtrip. Each stop is marked with a permanent sign, either on a building or hanging on a post. Each sign, created and installed by Fabin3d, contains a QR code that walkers can scan for information and pictures about that particular site.

The tour is featured on the Clio app and is the third such walk in Alliance, joining the Freedom Trail from Rodman Public Library to the Mabel Hartzell Historical Home, and the Alliance City Cemetery Tour.

Alliance’s city government and building and business owners downtown opted in to have the signs installed. Main Street Alliance helped to share and promote the tours.

The walk was dedicated June 15 with a ceremonial ribbon-cutting at the Carnation Caboose parking lot.

This article originally appeared on The Alliance Review: Alliance walking tour wins state award