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Preserving Ripons Record of history
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Ripon chef and president of the Ripon Historical Society, John Mangelos, looks through an album of 1920s history as he sits behind a microfilm reader used to view past issues of the towns newspaper.
By GLENN KAHL 209 staff reporter There’s a lot of Ripon history in the community’s downtown museum – stories from years past and photographs of the early day farming community and many of its residents. While the Clarence Smit Memorial Museum is stuffed with memorabilia, photo albums and newspaper accounts of the past, it promises to have much more in the near future thanks to noted chef John Mangelos who has been involved with the history of Ripon for years. One find of note from the town’s early years was the cannon ball that turned up near Caswell State Park and believed to be of Spanish or Mexican origin.