Ohio is a combination of rich agricultural farmland and forests, as well as a center for technology, education, industry, and recreation. Its farmland is dotted with major industrial cities and crisscrossed by roads and railways that carry most of the traffic between the East and Midwest. Taking its name from the Iroquois word for "something great," the state has produced its share of great men, including Thomas Edison, astronauts John Glenn and Neil Armstrong, and eight of the nation's presidents--William Harrison, Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, McKinley, Taft, and Harding.

The earliest inhabitants of the area were prehistoric people who built more than 10,000 mounds, many of them effigy mounds of great beauty. The first European to explore the Ohio area was probably the French explorer La Salle, in about 1669. Conflicting French and British claims of the area led to the French and Indian War, which ended in a treaty giving most of France's lands east of the Mississippi to Great Britain.

The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 set up the Northwest Territory, of which the future state of Ohio was a division. New Englanders of the Ohio Company bought land in the Muskingum River Valley and founded Marietta, the first permanent settlement. Other settlements soon sprang up along the Ohio River. The area grew as Revolutionary War veterans received land in payment for their services. Ohio became a state in 1803.

Though Ohioans had mixed feelings about the issue of slavery and the Civil War, about 345,000 men responded to Union calls for volunteers--more than twice the state's quota. Ohio also provided several Union commanders, including Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman.

After the Civil War ended, Ohio's abundant natural resources and its strategic position between two of the country's principal waterways--Lake Erie on the north and the Ohio River on the south--paved the way for rapid industrialization and growth. Today, Ohio has many major metropolitan areas, but its citizens are equally proud of Ohio's excellent park system; its wealth of small, tree-shaded towns; and its "queen city," Cincinnati.