Settled by
1837
17721788180318201837
When 31 of Ohio's major cities and historic sites were first founded by European Americans, from the Moravian missions of 1772 to Toledo in 1833. Drag the timeline to watch the state fill in.
Each date is the founding, landing or platting date that the cited source gives for the town. Where a fort or mission stood on the site first, the dashed ring marks it and the earlier date appears in the details. Scrub the timeline to a year before a town's founding to see its fort shown as an open diamond.
A few places carry two defensible dates. Hamilton counts from its 1791 fort, Youngstown from the 1796 survey, Toledo from the 1833 merger of Port Lawrence and Vistula. Those choices are noted on each entry.
These dates mark Euro-American settlement only. Shawnee, Delaware, Wyandot, Ottawa, Mohican and other nations lived across this land first, and towns such as Chillicothe kept the names of Native towns.
State and county boundaries: U.S. Census Bureau cartographic boundary files (public domain), via the us-atlas project.