Zanesville, OH

Zanesville is the city of the Y-Bridge — one of the very few Y-shaped bridges in the world, planted at the confluence where the Licking River meets the Muskingum, so that a driver may honestly cross the bridge and remain on the same side of the river; pilots once used it as a landmark, Amelia Earhart reportedly calling Zanesville the most recognisable city in the country from the air. The town was laid out in 1799 along Ebenezer Zane's frontier trace, served briefly as Ohio's capital, and gave the pioneer's great-grandson to American letters: Zane Grey, the dentist from Zanesville whose Riders of the Purple Sage invented the modern Western, is honoured in the National Road and Zane Grey Museum east of town.

The clays of the Muskingum Valley made Zanesville the "Pottery Capital of the World" a century ago — Weller, Roseville and their kilns shipped art pottery to the nation, and collectors still make pilgrimage to the summer pottery festivals. The archive's stage is Secrest Auditorium, the city's mid-century municipal hall (the source records' "Seacrest" is a common misspelling — a note for the registry), where touring orchestras, opera companies and entertainers have played to the mid-Ohio valley for decades. A bridge with three ends, a Western in its blood and kilns in its memory: Zanesville forks agreeably.