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OHIO,
the furthest east of the Great Lakes
states, clings to the southern edge of
shallow Lake Erie. This is known as one of
the nation’s most industrialized regions,
but the industry is largely concentrated
in the east, near the Ohio River, and to
the south the landscape becomes less
populated and more forested. Ohio also has
the largest Amish population in the
world, who farm in the northeast and west
into mid-Indiana, and are much less of a
tourist attraction than the highly
publicized Pennsylvania Dutch.
Enigmatic traces of Ohio’s earliest
inhabitants can be seen at the Great
Serpent Mound, a grassy state park
sixty miles east of Cincinnati, where a
cleared hilltop high above a river was
reshaped to represent a giant snake
swallowing an egg, possibly by the Adena
Indians around 800 BC. When the French
claimed the area in 1699, it was inhabited
by the Iroquois, in whose language
Ohio means “something great.” In the
eighteenth century, its prime position
between Lake Erie and the Ohio River made
it the subject of fierce contention
between the French and British; once the
British had acquired control of most of
the French land east of the Mississippi,
settlers from New England began to
establish communities both along the
Iroquois War Trail paths on the shores of
the lake and along the Ohio River.
During
the Civil War, Ohio was at the forefront
of the struggle, producing two great Union
generals, Ulysses Grant and William
Sherman, and sending more than twice its
quota of volunteers to fight for the
North. Its progress thereafter has
followed the classic “Rust Belt” pattern:
rapid industrialization, aided by its
natural resources and crucial location,
which during the 1970s foundered
alarmingly and has only recently shown any
signs of resurgence.
Although
the state is dominated by its triumvirate
of “C”s (Cleveland, Columbus
and Cincinnati), its most visited
destinations are the Lake Erie Islands,
which have benefited from the recent
cleanup of the polluted lake and now
attract thousands of partying mainlanders.
Cincinnati and Cleveland, the latter hit
especially hard by the recession, have
both undergone major face-lifts and are
surprisingly attractive, as is the
comparatively unassuming state capital of
Columbus.
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