Ohio - TV Tropes

Not entirely accurate. We grow soy too! (Source)

Ohio, the Buckeye State,^note  is the seventh-most populous state in the United States, and is often stereotyped as boring, rural farm country. This isn't a total lie—there is at least one working farm in all 88 counties—but it's not the whole truth either. With over 11 million people, Ohio is the most densely populated state outside the Atlantic coast. It has six cities of 100,000 or more; three of which—the "Big C's" Columbus, Cincinnati, and Cleveland—have metro areas in the millions. As such, Ohio is more diverse in people and belief than most outsiders realize. And while being in the Midwestern United States, Ohio is the only state in that region that is entirely within the Eastern Time Zone - all the other Midwestern states, including neighbors Indiana and Michigan, are at least partially in the Central Time Zone.

Most of its major cities are known for their industrial base, with the notable exception of Columbus. Like elsewhere in the Great Lakes region, current major cities started as industrial towns that grew along trade routes and attracted job-seeking immigrants from all over. Irish, Germans, and African Americans are the largest ethnic groups in the state, and the major cities also house significant Eastern European, Hispanic, Asian, Middle Eastern, and African^{Fun Fact} populations as well. The strong presence of racial minorities and a long legacy of labor unions have given Ohio's urban and working-class suburban areas a Democratic lean, though Republicans perform strongly in the more well-off suburban and rural areas (although, like the rest of the country, the suburban coalitions began to invert around the 21st century). This combined with Ohio's size made it a battleground state during election seasons. Presidential candidates on both sides made an effort to appeal to Ohio, and since the state has voted for the winning president all but three times (in 1944, 1960 and 2020) since 1896—the longest "winning streak" in the nation—this makes the political furor that much more intense. However, the state has become staunchly Republican in recent years due to the party's consolidation of the white working class.

Unfortunately, the state was hit hard when industrial and manufacturing companies left the Great Lakes region around the 1970s, and most of its cities except Columbus (more on that later) became Dying Towns and Wretched Hives overnight. The low employment led to high crime rates that the state still struggles to contain. However, The New '10s have seen some improvement in this regard, as the cities have been trying to base their economies around health care, education, finance, technology, etc.

After Virginia, Ohio is the state with the second most presidents born within its borders, with seven — all late-19th to early 20th century Republicans (Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, McKinley, Taft, Harding),^note  and is also the birthplace of Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the Moon. Other luminaries include fellow astronaut and long-time Democratic Senator John Glenn (the namesake of Columbus's airport), James Thurber, and a number of professional athletes, actors, and musicians. The United States Air Force maintains two bases in Ohio, one in Toledo and one in Dayton, the latter being where the 1998 Dayton Peace Accords were signed and the location of the Air Force's National Museum.

The state is generally divided into five regions:

• Northeast: The most populous and urbanized region, this is where you'll find Cleveland along with the smaller metropolises of Akron, Canton, and Youngstown (the former two cities are included in Cleveland's CSA and TV market, while the latter is its own metro area and TV market). Akron is the "Rubber Capital" of America, as Firestone and Goodyear both got their start here, forming the backbone of the city's industrial base. Both companies have long since moved manufacturing elsewhere, though Goodyear's corporate headquarters (and maintenance base for its blimps) is still here. Even though Cleveland and Akron are technically separate metro areas, they're less than an hour apart and close enough to effectively function as one, not unlike Washington, D.C. and Baltimore. Then there's Canton, where in 1920, a handful of semi-professional football teams from all over Ohio (and one from Illinois) met to form the American Professional Football Association, now known as the NFL. The Pro Football Hall of Fame & Museum is in Canton for this reason, and the city hosts the NFL's annual preseason Hall of Fame Game. As for Youngstown, it used to be a steel town until the abrupt closure of Youngstown Sheet and Tube in 1977, which laid off 5,000 workers and cost the city an additional 400 satellite businesses and 35,000 manufacturing jobs connected to them, an event known locally as "Black Monday." Since then, the city has been trying to rebrand itself as a college town since it isn't known for much else these days other than crippling poverty and the crime that comes with it. Northeast Ohio, much like neighboring Pennsylvania, is also notorious for getting loads of snow in the winter thanks to Lake Erie's effect on the weather. The "Snow Belt" starts around here and extends to Buffalo, New York.
• Northwest: Home of Toledo—a war was fought with neighboring Michigan over the territory.^note  From this is born a rivalry between two universities — The Ohio State University and the University of Michigan — and two states.^note  As for Toledo itself, the city's chief industry was glass and it was popularly known as "The Glass City," but like elsewhere in the Midwest, Toledo's days as a manufacturing giant are long behind it. You'll also find some popular summer getaways here like Cedar Point, generally considered the best amusement park in the country, sometimes the world. There's also Kelley's Island, a popular island and resort town in Lake Erie. Fans of Glee may be interested to know that Lima is located in this region as well, though the real city is unsurprisingly nothing like on the show (there are no palm trees, for starters). Has a tendency to have very wet summers, as it was formerly known as the Black Swamp and had to be drained by ditches and canals before it could be settled en masse.
• Southwest: Anchored by Cincinnati, this region culturally includes Northern Kentucky (where its main airport is located) and a tiny bit of Indiana due to Cincy's metro area extending into both states. A few TV shows, movies, and books are set here, most famously WKRP in Cincinnati. It also has a solid counter-park to Cedar Point in Kings Island (both owned by the same company). Dayton is in this region as well, hometown of Wilbur and Orville Wright, inventors of the modern airplane (though their first flight was in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina). Several institutions are named after the Wright Brothers, including the city's main airport and public university, and aviation technology is a big field here. Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, home of the National Museum of the United States Air Force, is located 10 miles northeast of the city. Cincinnati is also home to Union Terminal, an art-deco train station that was the artistic basis for the Hall of Justice (Cincy-based Taft Broadcasting owned Hanna-Barbera at the time, and several HB artists visited Taft's corporate headquarters, likely explaining the similarities). In a case of full-circle irony, stock footage of Union Terminal was used as a Hall of Justice-esque building by The CW's Arrowverse crossover event Invasion!.
• Southeast: Welcome to Coal Country. Sparsely populated, Southeast Ohio lacks an urban presence other than the college town of Athens, home of Ohio University. It is part of the larger Appalachia region and culturally has more in common with neighboring West Virginia than the rest of Ohio. Mining, natural gas, and lumbering are the order of the day. Unlike much of rural Ohio, this area was historically a Democratic stronghold thanks to the strength of the miners' unions, though clashes between the labor and environmentalist wings of the Democratic Party have pushed it (along with much of Appalachia) into the Republican camp. The region is also known for its beautiful scenery, as it is the only part of Ohio to avert The Mountains of Illinois trope (as most of the rest of Ohio was flattened by glaciers). Hiking, hunting, and camping are popular here.
• Central: This region is essentially the Columbus Metro Area. As mentioned earlier, Columbus is an anomaly among Ohio cities. Its economy is centered around the state government and The Ohio State University, the largest college in the U.S. by enrollment (and for most of its history the only school in the state with a power conference athletic program, the University of Cincinnati has been a power conference program over two different stints - 2005-14 as members of the American Athletic Conference^note , and since 2023 as members of the Big 12 Conference), rather than any specific industry at the mercy of economic trends. Snarkier observers refer to Columbus as the world's largest college town, but on the other hand, it hasn't been subjected to the Midwest's usual woes. For this reason, along with the city's low cost of living and relatively low crime, Columbus is becoming increasingly attractive to young professionals looking to build their lives. Not only is it the largest city proper in Ohio in both physical size and population, but as of the 2020 census, it has surpassed Cleveland as the state's second-largest metro area, and it's expected to overtake Cincinnati within the decade.

Notable People

People from Cleveland and Toledo (including their surrounding areas) can be found in those cities' pages.

People from Ohio 

Works that feature Ohio (excluding works set in Cleveland since it has its own page):

Ohio Media 

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Way to go Ohio. Only In Ohio