Ohio

Ohio sent 7 men to the White House between 1869 and 1923: Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, McKinley, Taft and Harding. That is more than any state except Virginia, and it tells you something about where the political center of the country sat after the Civil War. Ohio was big, prosperous, and balanced between East and West.

The state grew on water. The Ohio River formed its southern border and carried flatboats and steamboats down to the Mississippi. In the 1820s and 1830s, canals were dug across the state to connect the river to Lake Erie, and towns sprang up along them. Cincinnati, on the river, became so large and so important in pork packing that people called it Porkopolis. Its suspension bridge across the Ohio, designed by John Roebling and opened in 1866, was a trial run for his Brooklyn Bridge.

Cleveland grew on the lake. Iron ore came down from Minnesota and Michigan by boat, coal came up from the south by rail, and Cleveland made steel. John D. Rockefeller founded Standard Oil there in 1870. Akron became the rubber capital, making tires for the new automobile industry. Dayton was home to the National Cash Register Company and to the Wright brothers, who built their first airplanes in a bicycle shop on the west side of town.

Ohio was also a state of farms and small towns, and much of its photographic record is of courthouse squares, county fairs, covered bridges and main streets. In March 1913, heavy rains caused the worst flood in the state's history. Dayton and other river cities were badly hit, and the photographs of rowboats moving down downtown streets are some of the most dramatic in the Ohio record.

In pictures of Ohio cities, look at the smoke. Factory chimneys, railroad engines and coal stoves filled the air, and many photographs from around 1900 have a haze that softens everything in the distance. It was the look of prosperity at the time.