What began as a couple of cabins housing 11 families, more than two centuries later, has swelled into the third largest city in Ohio. In 1788, Israel Ludlow, Mattias Denman and Robert Patterson banded together to buy 800-acres of the Northwest Territory from seller John Cleves Symmes and settled the tract of land where the Ohio and Licking Rivers meet.
Originally named Losantiville by surveyor John Filson, who purchased a third of the 800 acres, the village was renamed Cincinnati in 1790 by Arthur St. Clair, Governor of the Northwest Territory. Since then, Cincinnati has stuck, but not without a fair share of nicknames, from the Queen City to Porkopolis.