River Mile: 470

Population: 309,317

U.S. Census Profile

Founded in 1788 across from the mouth of the Licking River, Cincinnati was originally called Losantiville by its original surveyor. Northwest Territory Gov. Arthur St. Clair changed the name to Cincinnati in honor of the Society of the Cincinnati, a group of Continental Army officers. Formally incorporated as a city in 1819, the city became a regional center for hay and pork processing, to the extent that it earned the nickname “Porkopolis.” Also known as the Queen City—from an 1819 newspaper article referring to it as the “Queen of the West”—Cincinnati thrived on its river trading connections with St. Louis and New Orleans downstream. Connected with the interior of Ohio and up to the Great Lakes by the Miami and Erie Canal, the city had so much business that it struggled to find enough workers.

Waves of Irish and especially German immigrants in the 1840s helped meet this demand and propelled the city’s economy as railroad links overtook the river trade in importance through the 19th century. It was the sixth largest city in the U.S. by 1850. Cincinnati was an important stop for enslaved people escaping bondage via the Underground Railroad, and was home to prominent to abolitionists, including for a time “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” author Harriet Beecher Stowe. The city sealed its place in sports history with the establishment of the nation’s first professional baseball team, the Cincinnati Red Stockings, in 1869. The first pro baseball night game was played there in 1935. Procter & Gamble, a flagship corporation for the city, started up in 1879, producing Ivory Soap. Other major companies including American Financial Corp., Cinergy, Kroger, E.W. Scripps Co. and Tones Isotoner would later be based there. Among the architectural and engineering jewels of the city, the Roebling Bridge over the Ohio River stands out. Completed in 1866, it was at one time the longest suspension bridge in the world and was a predecessor to the Roebling-designed Brooklyn Bridge. The world’s first reinforced concrete skyscraper, the Ingalls Building, was completed in 1903. The great 1937 flood wreaked havoc, inundating 15% of the city and prompting the construction of flood walls. Cincinnati was a major industrial center during both World Wars. Although the population of the city proper has declined from a peak of around half a million people in the 1950s, the metropolitan area is large enough for the city to maintain its standing as the region’s cultural center, hosting numerous theaters and arts organizations, the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden, as well as professional baseball, football and soccer teams. It also hosts the nation’s largest paddling celebration each August. Through the last decades of the 20th century and into the 21st, the city’s center was revitalized with historic preservation and new construction.