Monroe, Ohio: Named for the President

Monroe was platted in eighteen seventeen by Nathaniel Sackett and John H. Piatt, who named it for the sitting president, James Monroe, in what was then a common honor for new Ohio towns. It sat on the Dayton and Cincinnati pike, the main road connecting the two cities, which gave it early commercial life.

Growth was steady but modest: by the early eighteen thirties the town had one store and about a hundred and nineteen residents. Monroe remained a small village for most of its history. It was not until nineteen ninety-five, when the population crossed five thousand, that Monroe officially became a city.

It sits in the Great Miami River valley, halfway between Dayton and Cincinnati, much as it always has.