Bowling Green, Ohio: From the Black Swamp to Crystal City
Near Toledo, Ohio
Bowling Green traces its roots to the early eighteen thirties, when settlers arrived in the heart of Ohio's Great Black Swamp, a vast wetland that made northwest Ohio nearly impassable for early settlers. A postal carrier named the new settlement after his hometown in Kentucky. The town grew slowly until natural gas was struck nearby.
Cheap gas attracted glass-making companies, earning Bowling Green the temporary nickname Crystal City and spurring its incorporation as a city in nineteen oh one. The oil and gas boom was short-lived, the wells went dry within decades, but the city had established itself. Bowling Green State Normal School opened in nineteen ten to train teachers and grew into Bowling Green State University, today the city's dominant employer.
