Ohio's Most Historic Towns

Ohio's history spans Native American earthwork cultures, the first American settlements of the Northwest Territory, the Underground Railroad, and the industrial revolution of the Rust Belt.

Marietta
Ohio's oldest permanent American settlement (1788) — Marietta was the first organized settlement of the Northwest Territory, founded by Ohio Company veterans of the Revolutionary War. The Campus Martius Museum preserves the original stockade blockhouse and the Rufus Putnam house (the oldest surviving structure in Ohio). Mound Cemetery (within the original settlement) has a 30-foot-high Hopewell earthwork mound used as a cemetery.

Chillicothe
Ohio's first and third capital — Chillicothe was the Shawnee capital (Chalahgawtha) and then the first capital of the Northwest Territory state. The Hopewell Culture National Historical Park (Mound City) preserves 23 burial mounds of the Hopewell civilization (100 BCE – 500 CE). The outdoor drama "Tecumseh!" has run here since 1973. The Paint Creek valley setting is beautiful.

Zoar
A German separatist communal settlement (1817–1898) in Tuscarawas County — Zoar's original communal buildings (the Number One House — the communal leader's residence, now a museum), the garden (laid out in the shape of the Celestial Jerusalem), and the old tin shop are preserved as Zoar Village State Memorial.

Ripley (Brown County)
A key station on the Underground Railroad — Ripley's John Rankin House (a hilltop house above the Ohio River where Eliza Harris crossed the ice in the incident that inspired Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin) and the John Parker House (Parker, a formerly enslaved man who made 44 trips into Kentucky to bring freedom seekers north) are significant slavery-resistance sites.

Granville
A New England village transplanted to Ohio — Granville's village green, colonial-revival architecture, and Denison University give it a character entirely unlike the industrial Ohio of popular imagination.