Wilmington Street Department

About Wilmington Street Department

At three in the morning the grid of Wilmington belongs to the plow trucks — Main and Locust empty under blinking signals, the Murphy Theatre marquee dark, snow swirling through the headlights. The Wilmington Street Department is the city department that handles snow removal on those streets, running the routes in order, pushing accumulation out to the curb line and salting the hills, bridges and intersections where traction gives out first. Storms in this part of Ohio can begin as rain and finish as ice, which makes timing as much a part of the work as the blade itself. The reward is a town that can go about its Tuesday: buses rolling, deliveries arriving, people getting where they need to be. A city grid passable by the time Wilmington wakes up to it is the whole of the night's ambition.