In 1796, twelve white settlers traveled north from the Ohio River into what became known as the Miami Valley. There, they established a small settlement on the banks of the Great Miami River, not far from where the Mad River, the Stillwater River, and Wolf Creek empty into the Great Miami. They named their new town after Jonathan Dayton, a Revolutionary War veteran, investor in land in Ohio, and the youngest signer of the US Constitution. Though the settlement grew slowly at first, once connected by canal (1829), railroad (1851), and telegraph (1847), the city began to flourish. By the time of the US Civil War, Dayton had emerged as a manufacturing city with an increasingly diverse population. Between the 1870s and 1920s, Dayton became known for products ranging from paper to potato chips, cash registers, bicycles, and refrigerators. During this time, several individuals from Dayton rose to international prominence, including poet Paul Laurence Dunbar and the inventors of the airplane, Wilbur and Orville Wright. This period also witnessed the most important event in Dayton’s history, the 1913 flood. After that, Dayton became the largest city in the United States to adopt the city manager form of city government. After World War II, Dayton, like many cities in the so-called “Rust Belt,” suffered from deindustrialization and racial tensions. Dayton’s population peaked in the 1960s and, thereafter, the city lost population in every decade through the 2020s. Deep and lasting patterns of racial segregation divided Dayton’s population between an African American West Side and the largely white East and North Dayton. Local leaders embraced urban renewal and highway construction as potential answers to the city’s challenges with, at best, mixed results. As economic and population losses continued into the 21st century, the local economy shifted from manufacturing to “eds and meds.”
