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The Founding of the International Short Wave Club in Klondyke, Ohio

by George Zeller

The International Short Wave Club was the first all-shortwave broadcast DX club in history. It was organized October 4, 1929 in Klondyke, Ohio, although by 1933 it had moved to East Liverpool, Ohio. The ISWC was a pioneering effort that operated for more than three decades. NU, NASWA, and other shortwave broadcast DX organizations have built on the foundation begun by the International Short Wave Club almost 70 years ago.

For the last three or four years I have been searching for Klondyke, especially since most of us have forgotten about the ISWC altogether. There are two extremely tiny villages called Klondyke on some detailed Ohio maps. One is in Delaware County, about 20 miles north of Columbus in central Ohio. I previously worked with the Delaware County Historical Society, the Delaware County District Library, and the Ohio Wesleyan University Library to establish that this small stone quarry village was probably not the Klondyke where the ISWC was published. Another Klondyke existed at one time about ten miles north of Warren in Trumbull County of northeast Ohio, but this site bore no fruit either.

In early June, Jerry Berg found in an old ISWC bulletin that Klondyke is actually a neighborhood within the city of East Liverpool. This was the clue that I needed. We now have a significant amount of new information about the founding of the ISWC.

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International Short Wave Radio bulletin cover