Solon grew up out of what the first settlers called Big Grove, the one stand of heavy timber that broke up miles of open prairie and told a traveler exactly where they were on the trail. Koch Landscaping and Hauling Inc. works the gravel township roads that still run out from town through what's left of that old grove, hauling snow off farm lanes and rural driveways the same way they haul brush and fill the rest of the year. A gravel road takes a plow differently than pavement does — the blade has to ride a little higher to leave the rock bed alone — and a farmstead drive out past the grove often needs its own separate pass before the truck can even get down it. Clearing a lane all the way back to a farmhouse tucked in among those old trees, with enough room now for a car to pass a truck coming the other way, is the kind of finished job that means something out where neighbors sit miles apart, not blocks. That grove is most of why Solon sits where it does, and clearing a lane back into it is rural work built on exactly the ground the town was named for.