Columbus

Columbus was founded in 1812 on the high east bank of the Scioto River for the express purpose of being Ohio's capital — a brand-new town at the geographic center of the state, chosen to balance the older settlements scattered around the edges. It has since grown into the largest city in Ohio and one of the largest in the Midwest, an unusual case of a planned capital outpacing the cities it was meant to serve.

The Scioto and Olentangy rivers meet downtown, and the surrounding country is the flat-to-rolling glacial till plain of central Ohio, prime farmland. Home to Ohio State University and a diversified modern economy, Columbus has kept growing while older industrial cities in the state plateaued, anchoring a metro of more than two million.

• Ohio
  The Buckeye State, between the lake and the river located in
• Cleveland
  A Great Lakes industrial city on Lake Erie same state