Wolf's Ridge for Sale: The Deal That Made Columbus
Near Columbus, Ohio
The Ohio General Assembly had been arguing for years about where to put the state capital. Chillicothe had it first. Then Zanesville. Then Chillicothe again. By eighteen eleven the legislature had decided what it needed was a new city, centrally located, that didn't yet belong to anyone who would resent them.
Four men living in Franklinton, a small settlement on the west bank of the Scioto River, saw an opportunity. They approached the legislature with an offer: move the capital to a site directly across the river, on a high bank called Wolf's Ridge, and they would deed the state ten acres for a statehouse, ten acres for a penitentiary, and four acres for other public uses. They would also pay fifty thousand dollars in cash toward construction.
The legislature accepted on February fourteenth, eighteen twelve. The new city was named Columbus.
What the Franklinton men understood was that the value of their land on both sides of the river would rise enormously the moment the capital arrived. They were not wrong. They got their money back many times over. The state got a capital. The spot where you are standing, or rolling past, became the center of state government for the same reason most real estate decisions are made: somebody with property to sell made somebody with power to grant a very good offer.
The first state house was a two-story brick building completed in eighteen sixteen. The statehouse you see today took twenty-two years to build, from eighteen thirty-nine to eighteen sixty-one, and was still unfinished when Abraham Lincoln stopped here in February of eighteen sixty-one on his way to Washington. He spoke from its unfinished steps to a crowd gathered on the statehouse grounds. He had won Ohio in the election. He needed it again.
