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Ohio is a midwestern state of the United States. Part of the Great Lakes region,
Ohio is a cultural and geographical crossroads, which was settled by people
from New England, the Middle States, Appalachia, and the upper south. "This
slice of the mid-west contains a bit of everything American—part north-eastern
and part southern, part urban and part rural, part hardscrabble poverty and
part booming suburb," notes The Economist. Prior to 1984, the United
States Census Bureau considered Ohio part of the North Central Region. That
region was renamed "Midwest" and split into two divisions. Ohio
is now in the East North Central States division.
Ohio
was the first state admitted to the Union under the Northwest Ordinance. Its
U.S. postal abbreviation is OH; its old-style abbreviation is O. Ohio is an
Iroquoian word meaning "good river." The name refers to the Ohio
River that forms its southern border.
After the so-called Beaver Wars, the powerful Iroquois confederation of the New York-area claimed much of the Ohio country as a hunting and, probably most importantly, a beaver-trapping ground. After the devastation of epidemics and war in the mid-1600s, which had largely emptied the Ohio country of indigenous people by the mid-to-late seventeenth century, the land gradually became repopulated by the mostly Algonquian-speaking descendants of its ancient inhabitants, that is, descendants of the Adena, Hopewell, and Mississippian cultures. Many of these Ohio-country nations were multi-ethnic and sometimes multi-linguistic societies born out of the earlier devastation brought about by disease, subsequent social instability, and the powerful Iroquois. They subsisted on agriculture (corn, sunflowers, beans, etc.) supplemented by seasonal hunts. By the 1650s they were very much part of a larger global economy brought about by fur trade.
The indigenous nations to inhabit Ohio in the historical period (most clearly after 1700), included the Miamis (a large confederation), Wyandots (made up of refugees, especially from the fractured Huron confederacy), Delawares (pushed west from their historic homeland in New Jersey), Shawnees (also pushed west, although they may be descended from the Fort Ancient people of Ohio), Ottawas (more commonly associated with the upper Great Lakes region), Mingos (like the Wyandot, a recently-formed composite of refugees from Iroquois and other societies) and Eries (gradually absorbed into the new, multi-ethnic "republics," namely the Wyandot).
Ohio's
geographic location has proved to be an asset for economic growth and expansion.
Because Ohio links the Northeast to the Midwest, much cargo and business traffic
passes through its borders on its well-developed highways. Ohio has the nation's
10th largest highway network, and is within a one-day drive of 50% of North
America's population and 70% of North America's manufacturing capacity. To
the North, Lake Erie gives Ohio 312 miles (502 km) of coastline, which allows
for numerous seaports. Ohio's southern border is defined by the Ohio River
(with the border being at the 1793 low-water mark on the north side of the
river), and much of the northern border is defined by Lake Erie. It borders
Pennsylvania on the east, Michigan in the northwest near Toledo, Ontario,
Canada across Lake Erie to the north, Indiana to the west, Kentucky on the
south, and West Virginia on the southeast.
Ohio's borders were defined by metes and bounds in the Enabling Act of 1802 as follows:
“ Bounded on the east by the Pennsylvania line, on the south by the Ohio River, to the mouth of the Great Miami River, on the west by the line drawn due north from the mouth of the Great Miami aforesaid, and on the north by an east and west line drawn through the southerly extreme of Lake Michigan, running east after intersecting the due north line aforesaid, from the mouth of the Great Miami until it shall intersect Lake Erie or the territorial line, and thence with the same through Lake Erie to the Pennsylvania line aforesaid. ”
Note that Ohio is bounded by the Ohio River, but the river itself belongs mostly to Kentucky and West Virginia. The border with Michigan, has also changed, as a result of the Toledo War, to angle slightly northeast to the north shore of the mouth of the Maumee River.
Much of Ohio features glaciated plains, with an exceptionally flat area in the northwest being known as the Great Black Swamp. This glaciated region in the northwest and central state is bordered to the east and southeast first by a belt known as the glaciated Allegheny Plateau, and then by another belt known as the unglaciated Allegheny Plateau. Most of Ohio is of low relief, but the unglaciated Allegheny Plateau features rugged hills and forests.
The rugged southeastern quadrant of Ohio, stretching in an outward bow-like arc along the Ohio River from the West Virginia Panhandle to the outskirts of Cincinnati, forms a distinct socio-economic unit. Known somewhat erroneously as Ohio's "Appalachian Counties" (they are actually in the Allegheny Plateau), this area's coal mining legacy, dependence on small pockets of old manufacturing establishments, and even distinctive regional dialect set this section off from the rest of the state and, unfortunately, create a limited opportunity to participate in the generally high economic standards of Ohio. In 1965 the United States Congress passed the Appalachian Regional Development Act, at attempt to "to address the persistent poverty and growing economic despair of the Appalachian Region." This act defines 29 Ohio counties as part of Appalachia. While 1/3 of Ohio's land mass is part of the federally defined Appalachian region, only 12.8% of Ohioans live there.
Significant rivers within the state include the Cuyahoga River, Great Miami River, Maumee River, Muskingum River, and Scioto River. The rivers in the northern part of the state drain into the northern Atlantic Ocean via Lake Erie and the St. Lawrence River, and the rivers in the southern part of the state drain into the Gulf of Mexico via the Ohio and then the Mississippi. The worst weather disaster in Ohio history occurred along the Great Miami River in 1913. Known as the Great Dayton Flood, the entire Miami River watershed flooded, including the downtown business district of Dayton. As a result, the Miami Conservancy District was created as the first major flood plain engineering project in Ohio and the United States.
Grand Lake St. Marys in the west central part of the state was constructed as a supply of water for canals in the canal-building era of 1820–1850. For many years this body of water, over 20 square miles (52 km²), was the largest artificial lake in the world. It should be noted that Ohio's canal-building projects were not the economic fiasco that similar efforts were in other states. Some cities, such as Dayton, owe their industrial emergence to location on canals, and as late as 1910 interior canals carried much of the bulk freight of the state.
The climate of Ohio is a humid continental climate except in the extreme southern counties along the Ohio River where the climate transitions into the humid subtropical climate of the Southeastern United States. Evidencing this change, several plants such as the Southern magnolia, Albizia julibrissin(mimosa), Crape Myrtle, and even the occasional Needle Palm are hardy landscape materials regularly used as street, yard, and garden plantings in the Bluegrass section of Ohio; but, these same plants will simply not thrive in much of the rest of the State. This interesting change may be observed while traveling through Ohio on Interstate 75 from Cincinnati to Toledo; the observant traveler of this diverse state may even catch a glimpse of Cincinnati's common wall lizard, one of the few examples of permanent "subtropical" fauna in Ohio.
Metropolitan areas by population
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