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Ohio ( oh-HY-oh) is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It borders the Canadian province of Ontario to the north (through Lake Erie), Pennsylvania to the east, West Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Indiana to the west, and Michigan to the northwest. Ohio is the 34th-largest state by area, at 44,825 sq mi (116,100 km2), and the seventh-most populous state, with a population of nearly 11.9 million. Its capital and most populous city is Columbus, with other major metropolitan cities including Cleveland, Cincinnati, Dayton, Akron, and Toledo.
Ohio derives its name from the Ohio River that forms its southern border, which, in turn, originated from the Seneca word ohiːyo', meaning "good river", "great river", or "large creek". Its geography is varied, with rolling glaciated plains across most of the state, rugged unglaciated hills in the southeastern Allegheny Plateau, and Lake Erie coastline to the north. At the time of European contact, the area known as the Ohio Country was inhabited by Algonquian and Iroquoian nations, and was contested among Native American tribes, Britain, and France. Following American independence, Ohio was organized as part of the Northwest Territory and achieved statehood in 1803. Ohio was the first state admitted under the Northwest Ordinance and the first post-colonial free state admitted to the union.
Historically known as the heart of American industry, Ohio has the third-largest manufacturing sector and second-largest automobile production in the U.S.; it also has a large agriculture sector. The state has shifted to a more information and service-based economy in the 21st century, ranking seventh in GDP as of 2025. Tourism in Ohio is driven by attractions such as Cedar Point, the National Museum of the United States Air Force and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, as well as recreation areas including Cuyahoga Valley National Park and 76 state parks. Ohio is nicknamed the "Buckeye State" after its Ohio buckeye trees. It is also known as the "Mother of Presidents", having been the birthplace of seven U.S. presidents, and the "Birthplace of Aviation", as the Wright brothers designed and built the world's first successful airplane in Ohio before its first flight in North Carolina.
Archeological evidence of spear points of both the Folsom and Clovis types indicate that the Ohio Valley was inhabited by nomadic people as early as 13,000 BC. These early nomads disappeared from Ohio by 1,000 BC. Between 1,000 and 800 BC, the sedentary Adena culture emerged. The Adena established "semi-permanent" villages because they domesticated plants, including sunflowers, and "grew squash and possibly corn"; with hunting and gathering, this cultivation supported more settled, complex villages. The most notable remnant of the Adena culture is the Great Serpent Mound, located in Adams County, Ohio.
Around 100 BC, the Adena evolved into the Hopewell tradition, who were also mound builders. Their complex, large and technologically sophisticated earthworks can be found in modern-day Marietta, Newark, and Circleville. They were also a prolific trading society, their trading network spanning a third of the continent. The Hopewell disappeared from the Ohio Valley about 600 AD. The Mississippian culture rose as the Hopewell culture declined. Many Siouan-speaking peoples from the plains and east coast claim them as ancestors and say they lived throughout the Ohio region until approximately the 13th century.
There were three other cultures contemporaneous with the Mississippians: the Fort Ancient people, the Whittlesey culture and the Monongahela Culture. All three disappeared in the 17th century. Their origins are unknown. The Shawnees may have absorbed the Fort Ancient people. It is also possible that the Monongahela held no land in Ohio during the Colonial Era. The Mississippian culture was close to and traded extensively with the Fort Ancient people.
Indians in the Ohio Valley were significantly affected by the aggressive tactics of the Iroquois Confederation, based in central and western New York. After the Beaver Wars in the mid-17th century, the Iroquois claimed much of the Ohio country as hunting and, more importantly, beaver-trapping ground. The land gradually became repopulated by Algonquian people following a series of epidemics and war in the mid-17th century. Many of these nations were multi-ethnic (sometimes multi-linguistic) societies born out of the earlier devastation brought about by disease, war, and subsequent social instability. They subsisted on agriculture supplemented by seasonal hunts. By the 18th century, they were part of a larger global economy brought about by European entry into the fur trade.
Some of the Indigenous nations that historically inhabited Ohio include the Iroquoian, the Algonquian, and the Siouan. The region was also the site of Indian massacres, such as the Yellow Creek massacre and the Gnadenhutten massacre. After the War of 1812, when Natives suffered serious losses such as the Battle of Tippecanoe, most Native tribes either left Ohio or had to live on only limited reservations. By 1842, all remaining Natives were forced out of the state.
During the 18th century, the French set up a system of trading posts to control the fur trade in the region, which was known as the Ohio Country. Beginning in 1754, France and Britain fought the French and Indian War, with various Native American tribes on each side. As a result of the Treaty of Paris, the French ceded control of Ohio and the remainder of the Old Northwest to Britain in 1763.
During the 1760s and 70s, Britain thinly exercised sovereignty over the Ohio Country by stationing small garrisons in the region. Just beyond Ohio Country was the Miami people capital of Kekionga, which became the center of British trade and influence in Ohio Country and throughout the future Northwest Territory. By the Royal Proclamation of 1763, lands west of Appalachia were closed to settlement by Anglo-American colonists. The Treaty of Fort Stanwix in 1768 explicitly reserved lands north and west of the Ohio as Native lands. A new set of British policies towards the region's tribes led to the outbreak of Pontiac's War in 1763.
Ohio tribes participated in the war until an armed expedition in Ohio led by Brigadier General Henry Bouquet brought about a truce. Another colonial military expedition into the Ohio Country in 1774 brought Lord Dunmore's War, kicked off by the Yellow Creek massacre in Ohio, to a conclusion. In 1774, Britain passed the Quebec Act, which formally annexed Ohio and other western lands to the Province of Quebec in order to provide a civil government and to centralize British administration of the Montreal-based fur trade. The prohibition of settlement west of the Appalachians remained, contributing to the American Revolution.
By the start of the American Revolutionary War, the movement of Natives and Americans between the Ohio Country and Thirteen Colonies had resulted in tension. Fort Pitt in Pennsylvania had become the main fort where expeditions into Ohio started. Intrusions into the area included General Edward Hand's 1778 movement of 500 Pennsylvania militiamen from Fort Pitt towards Mingo towns on the Cuyahoga River, where the British stored military supplies which they distributed to Indian raiding parties; Colonel Daniel Brodhead's invasion in 1780 and destruction of the Lenape capital of Coshocton; a detachment of one hundred of George Rogers Clark's troops that were ambushed near the Ohio River by Indians led by Joseph Brant in the same year; a British and Native American attack on the U.S.' Fort Laurens; and the 1782 detainment and murder of 96 Moravian Lenape pacifists by Pennsylvania militiamen in the Gnadenhutten massacre.
The western theatre never had a decisive victor. In the Treaty of Paris in 1783, Britain ceded all claims to Ohio Country to the new United States after its victory in the American Revolutionary War.
The United States created the Northwest Territory under the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. Slavery was not permitted in the new territory. Settlement began with the founding of Marietta, Ohio, by the Ohio Company of Associates, which had been formed by a group of American Revolutionary War veterans. Following the Ohio Company, the Miami Company (also referred to as the "Symmes Purchase") claimed the southwestern section, and the Connecticut Land Company surveyed and settled the Connecticut Western Reserve in present-day Northeast Ohio. Territorial surveyors from Fort Steuben began surveying an area of eastern Ohio called the Seven Ranges at about the same time.
The old Northwest Territory originally included areas previously known as Ohio Country and Illinois Country. As Ohio prepared for statehood, the Indiana Territory was created, reducing the Northwest Territory to approximately the size of present-day Ohio plus the eastern half of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan and the eastern tip of the Upper Peninsula and a sliver of southeastern Indiana called "The Gore". The coalition of Native American tribes, known as the Western Confederacy, was forced to cede extensive territory, including much of present-day Ohio, in the Treaty of Greenville in 1795.
Under the Northwest Ordinance, areas could be defined and admitted as states once their population reached 60,000. Although Ohio's population was only 45,000 in December 1801, the United States Congress determined that it was growing rapidly enough and accelerated the process via the Enabling Act of 1802. In regard to the Leni Lenape natives, Congress decided that 10,000 acres on the Muskingum River in the present state of Ohio would "be set apart and the property thereof be vested in the Moravian Brethren ... or a society of the said Brethren for civilizing the Indians and promoting Christianity".
Rufus Putnam has been referred to as the "father of Ohio". He and Manasseh Cutler were instrumental in creating the Northwest Ordinance, which opened up the Northwest Territory for settlement. The land was used to serve as compensation for what was owed to Revolutionary War veterans. Putnam organized and led the Ohio Company of Associates, who settled at Marietta, Ohio, where they built Campus Martius. Putnam set substantial amounts of land aside for schools, and in 1798, he created the plan for the construction of Muskingum Academy, now Marietta College. After being appointed superintendent of the Ohio Company relating to the settlement north of the Ohio River, he was later commissioned as Surveyor-General of United States Lands and served as a judge in the Northwest Territory's first court. In 1802, he served in the Ohio Constitutional Convention.
On February 19, 1803, President Thomas Jefferson signed an act of Congress approving Ohio's boundaries and constitution. Congress, however, did not formally admit Ohio as the 17th state. After the oversight was discovered in 1953 during preparations for Ohio's sesquicentennial, Congressman George H. Bender introduced legislation retroactively admitting Ohio effective March 1, 1803, the date the Ohio General Assembly first convened. At a special session in Chillicothe, Ohio, the state legislature approved a new petition for statehood, which was delivered to Washington, D.C., on horseback and approved that August.
Ohio has had three capital cities: Chillicothe, Zanesville, and Columbus. Chillicothe served as the capital from 1803 to 1810, before the seat of government moved to Zanesville for two years as part of a legislative compromise. The capital returned to Chillicothe in 1812 and was permanently relocated to Columbus in 1816 because of its central location within the state.
Although many Native Americans migrated west to evade encroachment, others remained in Ohio and partially assimilated. Around 1809, the Shawnee renewed resistance to further American expansion, leading to Tecumseh's War between the United States and Tecumseh's confederacy. During the War of 1812, the British invaded Ohio from Upper Canada and allied with the Shawnee. Tecumseh was killed at the Battle of the Thames in 1813, and most of the Shawnee, excluding the Pekowi in southwest Ohio, were forcibly removed westward.
Ohio was on the front line of the western theater during the War of 1812. One of the largest naval engagements of the war was the Battle of Lake Erie that took place near South Bass Island, where Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry lead a U.S. Navy squadron to victory over a Royal Navy force under Robert Heriot Barclay. The victory and subsequent peace are commemorated by Perry's Victory and International Peace Memorial.
After the war, most remaining Native American groups in Ohio were forcibly removed westward under federal removal policies, particularly following the Indian Removal Act of 1830. In 1835, Ohio and the Michigan Territory fought the mostly bloodless Toledo War over control of the Toledo Strip, which included the mouth of the Maumee River and surrounding farmland. Only one person was injured in the conflict. Congress later made Michigan's statehood conditional on ending the dispute; in exchange for relinquishing its claim to the Toledo Strip, Michigan received the western two-thirds of the Upper Peninsula.
During much of the 19th century, industry was rapidly introduced to complement an existing agricultural economy. One of the first iron blast furnaces opened near Youngstown, Ohio, in 1804. By the mid-19th century, 48 blast furnaces were operating in Ohio, mostly in the southern part of the state. The discovery of coal deposits in the state aided further development of Ohio's steel industry, and by 1853, Cleveland was the nation's third-largest iron and steel producer.
Ohio played a significant role in the Underground Railroad due to its location on the Kentucky border, the northernmost state of the Upland South, and its anti-slavery sentiments. Abolitionists serving the Underground Raildroad worked with enslaved people to organize escape routes to the North, and many of these routes intersected and passed through the state of Ohio.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Ohio”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.