Looking for best-kept secret spots in Ohio?

How do I know about hidden gems in Ohio? Every year I travel to Toledo, Ohio for a week. Let me guess, you want to know why — everyone always has that question when I tell them where I’m going for vacation. Lol. The answer is my mom is from there. So, I have a ton of family there and I go see them every year.

As anyone familiar with Ohio knows, Toledo is very close to the Michigan line. For that reason, we always either adventure up into Michigan or stay in Ohio to explore.

Below are three of my favorite hidden gems in Ohio. Read on to see why you should go there too.

1. Have a Tea Party at Dollop Shop

Dollop Shop is in Toledo, Ohio and our tea party there is one of my favorite things I have ever done. It’s a bakery owned by a former doctor. Aside from being a bakery, they host all kinds of different events. The events hosted here are what makes Dollop Shop land on my list of hidden gems in Ohio. You can look at their events page to see what is coming up.

One of the events they offer is a tea party. Sadly, there wasn’t one going on that I could make it to while I was in Toledo. So, my family and I decided to create our own tea party. We dressed up in “tea party attire” and off we went to Dollop Shop. I can’t even begin to explain to you how much fun we had!

We ordered pastries, coffee, and lemonade downstairs. We had macaroons, cupcakes, lavender lemonade, Vietnamese coffee, and more. It was all delicious! If you order a Vietnamese coffee it comes with a free mini donut. And, if you are a coffee lover who has never had a Vietnamese coffee, you need one. They are so good!

I can’t remember the exact cupcake I had, but I do remember it was delicious. The frosting on it was unlike any frosting I’ve ever had before! You can see it in the pictures to the right, and if you show them the picture I’m sure they can tell you what kind it is.

Upstairs is where the magic happens! It is decorated so cute up there. After we got our goodies we headed up for our tea party. No, we didn’t drink tea — but we still called it a tea party. Haha! We went in the middle of the day during a weekday, so there wasn’t many people dining in. We pretty much had the entire upstairs to ourselves — and we were there for about four hours…. Lol. We had an absolute blast taking pics, eating our goodies, and pretending we were at a real tea party.

2. Visit the Libbey Glass Factory Outlet

Toledo, Ohio is known as the glass city. Why you ask? Because Toledo is the glass capital of the world — not just the country. Most of my family members worked at Libbey Glass at some point over the years.

So, it makes sense that the Libbey Glass Outlet would also be in Toledo. You will find it in Downtown Toledo and the place is huge! If you are looking for any kind of glassware, this is the place to go. The savings you will find here are unimaginable. I bought wine glasses for $1 each. I purchased a glass salad bowl set that came with one large salad serving bowl and four smaller salad bowls for $9. They have many items for less than $1 and even more under $10.

I’m always amazed at the prices when I go in here. And, it’s all very good quality! It is real glassware made at Libbey Glass. You can literally save hundreds by purchasing your glassware here.

3. Welcome to Shawshank

Visit the Ohio State Reformatory

It is one of the best hidden gems I’ve found in Ohio. The reformatory is in Mansfield, Ohio and is the place where Shawshank Redemption was filmed. Before my visit I assumed you had to be a fan of the movie, or at least have watched the movie, to find this place interesting. That is not the case.

There are many different ways to tour the reformatory. There are self-guided tours and four different guided tours to choose from. My family and I chose to book the Beyond the Bars tour. Granted, it’s the only guided tour I have done here, but I highly recommend it. Once we were finished with our guided tour, we done the self-guided tour as well.

To me, the outside of it doesn’t even look like a prison. It looks more like a castle, which is what they were going for when construction began in 1886. When it opened in 1896 it was a reformatory for boys who were between the ages of 16 and 30 and were first time petty offenders. Surprisingly, it worked very well. Only a small percentage of boys who left the reformatory ended up back in the Ohio prison system.

Eventually, by 1970 it had become a maximum security prison. It closed in 1990 due to inhumane conditions. On our guided tour we learned the history of the place and heard stories. The stories ranged from when it was a reformatory to when it was a maximum security prison to how Shawshank came to be filmed here. I can’t stress enough to you how interesting this tour was.

Two Intriguing Parts of My Reformatory Tour

There are two active prisons right next to the reformatory

On the Beyond the Bars tour we got to go up in one of the guard towers. It was the only part of the tour where cell phones were prohibited. That is because we had a birds eye view of an active maximum security prison and medium security prison.

There are also specific windows throughout the tour that I couldn’t take pictures out of because you can see the active prisons out of them.

The first maximum security inmates at the reformatory

One of the things our guide told us that I found to be particularly interesting is about when the first maximum security inmates arrived at the reformatory. At the time it was still being ran as a reformatory, so they weren’t prepared for maximum security inmates. The inmates were sent to the reformatory from the Ohio State Penitentiary

In 1930 there was a fire at the Ohio State Penitentiary. At that time the prison was still on the skeletal key system. Sadly, many inmates were stuck inside their cells and over 300 were killed in the fire. Most of the survivors were sent to the London Prison Farm, but some were sent to the Ohio State Reformatory. Thus, that is how the reformatory received their first maximum security inmates. All of them were men.

As you can imagine, the reformatory didn’t know what to do with the maximum security inmates. They weren’t prepared for them. They ended up putting all of those inmates into an attic together. There were no cells, no bars, no walls. Showers and toilets were at the back of the attic and the attic was lined with beds. The exact number of men up there is unknown. The men wrote and drew on the walls in that attic. The writings and drawings are still there today. My family and I were able to explore the attic during our tour and read/look at them. You can see some of the writings and drawings to the left in my pictures. The only way you can see this attic is on the Beyond the Bars guided tour.

On paper, nothing bad happened in that attic. However, oral history says otherwise. Our guide said he was told the guards who guarded the outside of that attic said the head count was different each day.

I will leave you with the same question our guide asked us: If you were the guard outside of that attic and you could hear the maximum security inmates in there fighting and yelling and possibly screaming for help, would you run in there like superman to help them? Remember, these guards signed up to be reformatory guards — not maximum security guards.

There You Have It

Those are three of my favorite hidden gems in Ohio! Rather you live in Ohio or go there often, mark these down as places to visit. They’re all three primarily in Northern Ohio around the Toledo area.

Remember, you don’t always have to travel far to find fun and interesting things to do. Dorothy said it best, sometimes you don’t have to look any farther than your own backyard.