11 Midwest World Magazine

Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea--putting the Tryon Palace Gardens of New Bern, NC on the cover of a new magazine called Midwest World Magazine. Volume 1, Number 1, is dated May 1973, and the editorial offices were in Bexley, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus. If it is one thing I’ve learned in over thirty years of collecting premiere issues, it is that you need to have a clear focus. Were there no pretty parks in Indianapolis or Chicago or Cincinnati?

The editor, John W. Hansford, wrote in “Notes on creating a magazine” that

“We set out to publish a magazine about Ohio and its closest neighbors. . . [second thoughts] Why not the whole Middle West? And why not add part of Canada and the Middle Atlantic states and a few of the border states? . . . The Midwest is a state of mind.”

It appears I picked this magazine up at a library sale, because two photographs have been sliced out--maybe for a school project by a child. The photos really aren’t very good, another problem with focus of another type. Ulrich’s shows no listing for this title, however, Bowling Green University did catalog it and shows a volume 2 with a cease date of 1974 with a question mark.

However, considering that I selected two journals at random from my shelf, this one and #10 The Great Lakes Outdoors, we think it is fate that we Bruces must visit the Bruce Peninsula in Ontario, because both premiere issues wrote about it. Great Lakes Outdoors featured the wild orchids of the Bruce Peninsula, a long finger of land that points northwest toward Manitoulin Island and separates Lake Huron from the waters of Georgian Bay, and Midwest World included an article on The Bruce Trail, a scenic 435 mile hiker’s haven stretching from the U.S. border at Queenston Heights to Tobermory on the Georgian Bay.

Midwest World Magazine
May 1973, Volume 1, Number 1
Status: ceased 1974
ISSN (na)
Subject: Midwestern United States (loosely defined)
Publication schedule, monthly
Midwest World Publications
2606 Fair Avenue
Box 6644
Bexley, Ohio 43209
Printed by West-Camp Press, Inc. Westerville, Ohio
$1.00; $6 a year; $11.75 2 years; $17.50 3 years.
Publisher: K. F. Bredenbeck
Editor: John W. Hansford