Cincinnati Ohio Economic Development

Cincinnati makes it happen!

philasun.com • By Renée S. Gordon
The centerpiece of an exhibit I saw during my recent trip to Cincinnati was the rarest of Egyptian artifacts, a letter, penned by a court scribe, but with the 2,000-year old signature of Cleopatra. The letter, for a friend of Mark Antony’s, grants an exemption against paying an Egyptian tax on the importation of Roman wine. The most interesting aspect of the document is a Greek word that is added in her own hand, “Ginesthoi,” “Make it happen.” It seems that in 50 BC the Queen of the Nile summed up the soul and character of Cincinnati.

In 1669, La Salle is believed to have been the first explorer into the Ohio River Basin, an area used as a river crossing by Native Americans. Settlers established a trio of small colonies in 1788 on the north shore of the Ohio River with Losantiville, the middle one, located near the Licking River. A year later Fort Washington was constructed to protect the newly acquired Northwest Territories and the following year the settlement was named after the Roman General who gave his name to the Society of the Cincinnati. Like Rome, it is built on seven hills. It was incorporated as a city in 1819.

Cincinnati has always been a city of industry and has consistently been able to remake itself throughout the years. Early on it was an important staging point for expeditions and settlements westward. River commerce boomed after 1812 and by the 1830s it was referred to as Porkopolis because it was the world’s major pork packing center. When trade was cut off by the Civil War Cincinnati remade itself into a recruiting and outfitting center with lucrative government contracts.

River traffic declined and in the 1870’s Cincinnati remade itself again by becoming the only city to build its own $20-million southern rail line. The city grew to such an extent that for a time it was the largest city in the nation.

Read the full Philadelphia Sunday article here.