OHIO

BY ELISABETH ANN MORRIS

GEOGRAPHY

Area: 44,828 Square miles

Number of Counties: 88

Highest point: 1,549 feet (Campbell Hill)

Lowest point: 455 feet (Ohio River)

BUCKEYE STATE AREA: 107,044 sq km (41,330 sq mi). POPULATION: 11,102,000. CAPITAL: Columbus, pop. 643,000. ECONOMY: Industry: transportation equipment, fabricated metal products, machinery, food processing, electric equipment. Agriculture: soybeans, dairy products, corn, hogs, cattle, poultry and eggs. PCI: $20,930. ADMISSION: 1803 as 17th state.

Blessed with the navigable waters of Lake Erie and the Ohio River—a thousand kilometers open to barge traffic—Ohio enjoyed an early boom in manufacturing and commerce. Today the industrial cities of Toledo, Akron, and Cleveland turn out rubber, automobiles, glass, and steel. As ports, Cleveland and Toledo benefit from foreign trade-zone status. Worked by only 5 percent of the labor force, farms cover 60 percent of Ohio, which lies within the bountiful midwestern grain belt. Because of bans on phosphates and controls on toxic effluent, Lake Erie, proclaimed “dead” in the 1960s, is cleaner than it has been for decades.