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Columbus, the capital city of Ohio, was founded on the east bank of the Scioto River in 1812. The city was founded as the state's capital beside the town of Franklinton, since incorporated into Columbus. The city's growth was gradual, as early residents dealt with flooding and cholera epidemics, and the city had few direct connections to other ...
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Columbus, city, Franklin, Fairfield, and Delaware counties, capital (1816) of Ohio, U.S., and seat (1824) of Franklin county. It is situated in the central part of the state on the relatively flat Ohio till plain, at the junction of the Scioto and Olentangy rivers. Columbus is at the centre of a metropolitan complex that includes Dublin (northwest)...
Columbus was planned in 1812 as a political centre by the Ohio legislature and was named for Christopher Columbus. The state government moved to the city in 1816 from Chillicothe, and Columbus later absorbed the nearby earlier settlement of Franklinton (founded 1797). The city experienced significant growth after a feeder branch of the Ohio and Erie Canal was opened to it in 1831 and the Cumberland (National) Road from Maryland reached it in 1836. The first railroad arrived in 1850, further stimulating development.
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During the American Civil War, Columbus became a major staging area for Union forces, and Camp Chase, one of the North’s largest facilities for Confederate prisoners of war, was built on the city’s west side. The local economy continued to boom after the war. Columbus became one of the country’s major manufacturers of horse-drawn vehicles. By 1900, when the population exceeded 125,000, the city had emerged as an important transportation and commercial centre. Following damaging floods in 1913, the Scioto River was widened and levees, retaining walls, and bridges constructed, which allowed riverfront development.
In the early 21st century the fastest-growing sectors of the local economy were education and health, transportation and utilities, and professional and business services. High-technology industries and manufacturing (automobiles, motorcycles, communications equipment, steel and steel products, and nutritional supplements) were also important. The city’s favourable geographic position was enhanced by the presence of main-line railroads, an extensive highway network, and an international airport. Nearly half of the U.S. population was located within a 500-mile (about 800-km) radius of Columbus.
The main campus of the Ohio State University (1870), which has one of the largest enrollments of any American university, occupies a large site north of downtown. Other institutions of higher learning include Franklin University (1902), Capital University (1830), Ohio Dominican College (1911), Otterbein University (1847), Pontifical College Josephinum (1888), Columbus College of Art and Design (1879), Columbus State Community College (1963), and state schools for the hearing and visually impaired. Notable research organizations are Battelle Memorial Institute (1929; technology), the Orton Ceramic Foundation, and the Chemical Abstracts Service. The federal government operates a large military supply centre and other facilities. Many of the state’s institutions and offices and the state fairgrounds are in the city. The Ohio Statehouse (a limestone structure in Doric style, completed in 1861) has a monument by sculptor Levi Tucker Scofield.
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Jun 17, 2009 · And why, one might ask, was Columbus called the Arch City? The answer was readily apparent to anyone who saw a picture of Ohio's capital city.
By the early 1990s, Columbus had grown to become Ohio's largest city in land area and in population. Efforts to revitalize downtown Columbus have had some success in recent decades, [62] though like most major American cities, some architectural heritage was lost in the process.
Columbus, City (pop., 2020: 905,748), capital of Ohio, U.S. Located at the junction of the Scioto and Olentangy rivers, the city was planned in 1812 as a political centre and sited opposite the original 1797 settlement of Franklinton; the state government moved to the city in 1816.
The first settlement was erected in 1797, on the west side of the Scioto, by Lucas Sullivant and others who named their community Franklinton. Until 1816, the state capital was at Chillicothe in the state's southern part, but it was believed that a more central location was needed for the capital.
Jan 28, 2017 · Columbus took off pretty quickly, but it took until 1834 for enough people — 4,000 — to be living there before it could be considered a city, and not just a village. Its population really started to rise during the Civil War, when it served as a training base for Union soldiers, and as a prison camp for captured Confederate soldiers.
