RIPLEY, Ohio — The small city of Ripley on the banks of the Ohio River is still home to the annual Ohio Tobacco Festival, though most residents may agree it has become less about tobacco and more about auto shows, parades and food vendors.

The four large tobacco warehouses (OK, Independent, Union and New Farmers) where buyers met and sold leaf still dwarf the city’s main thoroughfare, though they’re not used anymore. The warehouses once saw the annual sale of 16 million pounds of tobacco. In their last year of operation just four years ago, just two million pounds of tobacco changed hands.

Just as tobacco production has nearly diminished in southern Ohio, so has the need for tobacco warehouses. Tobacco once provided a living for many families in Brown and Adams counties.

But one man is on a crusade to preserve some of tobacco’s rich history. Ed Fath, 78, is proprietor of the Ohio Tobacco Museum, an 1850s structure filled with tobacco artifacts of all kinds. It stands next to the four vacant tobacco warehouses.

He and his late wife, Edie, started the museum in 1982, a year before the Ohio Tobacco Festival got under way. Both were members of the festival for 20 years and were among those who donated $100 to help incorporate the museum by becoming lifetime members.

Other members either gave up support or died of old age, leaving the museum in the hands of Ed and Edie. Edie died last year, leaving the museum to Fath.

“The others don’t come around much anymore, so it’s up to me,” he said. “Also, before my wife died she made me promise to keep the museum going. I plan on doing just that.”

Six rooms of this two-story brick house help tell the story of tobacco. The home is of Federal and Georgian styles architecture. The house was once owned by the Espey family (Mr. Espey worked for Heavy Munition Works in Cincinnati, the company that produced Ripley’s three cannons for protection during the Civil War).

The history room displays the earliest years of tobacco farming, the origin of white burley tobacco, tobacco farming during the Civil War era, the Lucky Strike Green Has Gone to War story and Lt. General Grant cigars. The stripping room follows tobacco handling from planting to processing and displays early tools used in tobacco growing. There, one will find real tobacco to touch and smell.

Fath enjoys taking visitors through each of the museum’s Hall of Fame room. This recognizes those who have made significant contributions to tobacco and the preservation of the tobacco industry. The tobacco farm room offers an explanation of raising it from seed to finished product, as well as a look at some of the earliest small equipment used in its production of. This room also houses a large replica of a seven-tier tobacco barn.

Tobacco memorabilia and video presentations are in the second-floor room, as are cigar, pipe and ashtray displays. Bags of tobacco from 1904-34 are on display, as well as tobacco plug cutters, tobacco shredders, tobacco worms and more. Cigars as old as 170 years are on display, as are rare pouches of chewing tobacco and tobacco tins. A “Loving Cup” tobacco tin on display has an estimated value of $3,000.

Adjacent to the museum is a building that houses large, old tobacco equipment including one of the first three-point hitch tobacco setters, an antique scale, tobacco sled, tobacco primer, hogshead and various tobacco presses. A third building contains the museum shop, as well as an information area offering 24-hour access to maps and brochures for other sites of interest in the surrounding areas.

“One will find everything about tobacco in here,” Fath said, “even though tobacco is sliding and is not the prestigious thing it once was.

“It was a living for so many in this area. That has diminished over time. Tobacco is still raised, but more, bigger (scale) farmers are growing the crop and few smaller grow it.”

Hundreds of packs of cigarettes and lighters fill display cases; scores of matchbooks and pipes fill others. Many were donated by visitors, and many, Fath collected through the years at auctions or flea markets.

“We have more than 200 lighters, new and old,” he said. “We have an abundance of tobacco tins and they’re getting very valuable these days. I’m constantly running into more tobacco artifacts. Most people donate items for the museum but at times, I have to pay a little money to get them in here.”

The museum has just about every tobacco-related item on display.

Well, almost everything. “I’ve been searching for that elusive pack of Chesterfield cigarettes,” Fath said.

The Ohio Tobacco Museum is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit supported by donations and memberships and managed and operated by volunteers like Fath, though volunteer support has dwindled in recent years.

“The utility bills cut through my finances in the wintertime, but as long as I have some money on hand and I have my friends to help me, I’m going to keep the museum up and running,” Fath said.

He annually raised 6,000 pounds of tobacco on his 180-acre farm just three miles from here before the huge tobacco buyout several years ago. He admits to missing work in the tobacco fields. The museum, he said, keeps him in touch with his past.

“We don’t promote tobacco, we’re just preserving its history,” Fath said.

Museum hours are Saturdays 10 a.m.-4 p.m. and Sundays 1-4 p.m. April-December, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. during summer holidays or anytime by appointment, by calling 937-392-9410. Tour groups are welcome; bus parking is available. Admission is by donation.