Columbus, OH news and local guide

Between about 1000 BC and AD 1700, the Adena, Hopewell and Fort Ancient peoples built mounds in the Columbus area. Mound Street is named for one that stood at Mound and High Streets, and its clay went into the city's first bricks. A Mingo village at the forks of the Scioto and Olentangy rivers was burned by colonial militia in 1774. After the Battle of Fallen Timbers and the Treaty of Greenville in 1795 opened the land to settlers, the Virginia surveyor Lucas Sullivant founded Franklinton on the west bank of the forks in 1797, naming it for Benjamin Franklin. A flood wiped it out in 1798, and it was rebuilt farther inland. Nearby, Congress set aside the 103,000-acre Refugee Tract for Canadians and Nova Scotians who had lost their property for backing the American cause; the Ohio Statehouse stands on part of it.

More about Columbus

After the state capital had moved from Chillicothe to Zanesville and back, the legislature agreed to build a new city in the center of the state. Columbus, named for Christopher Columbus, was founded on February 14, 1812, on the "High Banks opposite Franklinton at the Forks of the Scioto," then a forested hunting ground. Landowners donated two 10-acre plots for the Statehouse and the penitentiary. The borough was incorporated on February 10, 1816, with Jarvis W. Pike as its first mayor. Fevers and a cholera outbreak that killed 100 people from July to September 1833 led to the creation of a board of health. Growth was slow until 1831, when the National Road arrived from Baltimore and the city was linked to the Ohio and Erie Canal. Sources Wikipedia: Columbus, Ohio