Destiny St Clair

North Bend nearly became region's great city

Nearly 223 years ago, John Cleves Symmes sold 800 acres upon which Cincinnati would be founded.

Symmes envisioned a metropolis rising on the north shore of the Ohio River, but he expected that to happen about 15 miles downstream – on land he kept for himself.

Oops.

Photos: North Bend history 

The site Symmes developed, North Bend, now has 857 residents, making it the second-smallest village in Hamilton County. Cincinnati, with 296,943, is the third-most populous city in Ohio.

Key to which settlement would become Queen City of the West was where a fort would be built. The Army would guard against Miami and Shawnee Indians.

Troops were based at North Bend from its inception in February 1789. A few months later, an affair of the heart altered destiny, some historians claim.

If it hadn’t been for one love-struck soldier, North Bend might have grown to be the region’s great city, according to Jacob Burnet, a contemporary of Symmes and author of “Notes on the Early Settlement of the North-Western Territory” (1847).

Symmes, a New Jersey representative to the Continental Congress, was granted a federal patent in 1787 to buy land between the Great Miami and Little Miami rivers. The Miami Purchase ended up being 311,682 acres. Symmes and his partners, who paid 67 cents an acre, resold most of the land to settlers.

Symmes and other pioneers – accompanied by Capt. William Kersey and about 45 soldiers – took flatboats down the Ohio River into a wilderness populated by buffalo, bears and Indians.

Arriving Feb. 2, 1789, Symmes called the village North Bend because it was at a northern curve of the river.

Symmes figured the location, near where the Great Miami River flows into the Ohio, formed a natural intersection for commerce.

Cincinnati was settled a month earlier. It was first called Losantiville, which acknowledged that the town was across from the mouth of the Licking River. The “L” in the euphonious name represented the Licking, “os” was Latin for mouth, “anti” the Greek for opposite and “ville” French for town.

Mathias Denman paid Symmes $125 for land stretching from the Ohio River north to what is now Liberty Street. The western boundary paralleled Central Avenue, and the eastern line was Broadway.

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