Our feature OKI Wanna Know is designed to help you get to know the area a little bit better. We answer your questions about local oddities and unique traits. This time, we take you on a tour, with WVXU's Bill Rinehart.
When Melanie Cushion of Loveland first moved to the area, she noticed some purplish signs with numbers and the letters Q, C, and T on light poles.
"I ended up following the entire circuit to get to know my new city," Cushion says. "I've always wondered: when were those signs first installed? When were they taken down? And is there any chance the concept might be revived, maybe through an app?"
QCT stands for Queen City Tour, a concept that was launched as Cincinnati celebrated the 180th anniversary of its founding in 1968.
The project was a collaboration between the Cincinnati Historical Society, the Greater Cincinnati Beautiful Committee, the Highway Maintenance Division and the Traffic Department of the city, the Automobile Club, the visitors bureau and the Chamber of Commerce, and the Junior League.
The tour, by automobile, would take about two hours to complete. The Enquirer Magazine also reported in December 1968 Mayor Eugene Ruehlmann unveiled the logo for the tour: a stylized crown in gold, on a purple background.
Cincinnati and Suburban Bell Telephone planned to print a map. And the first of 250 signs were scheduled to be installed in the spring of 1969, each pointing the way to a site of interest.
The following February, according to the Enquirer, City Council approved $10,000 to pay for signs to mark the 40-mile route. That article also said the tour could be completed in two hours and 15 minutes, “driving at a leisurely pace.”
By 1970, the signs were up, and a brochure was printed, and according to an editorial in the paper, there were 88 points of interest on the 42-mile tour, which would now last two-and-a-half hours.
Metro — or as it was known then, Queen City Metro — had its own tour in the 1970s. It apparently was designed with bus riders in mind, and wasn't as complete as the QCT because buses couldn't go on all the streets included.
In October 1977, an item in the Enquirer indicated the QCT was "no longer operative for a lack of funds."
The QCT was revived in 1981. By then, it had expanded to Northern Kentucky, and included 103 sites. There were new signs too, with Queen City Tour written out instead of abbreviated. Some of these signs are still out there.
The tour got another refresh in 1996. The Enquirer reported faded signs were replaced with arrows, and the map was replaced with a booklet that was supposed to cost less than $5.
After that, the tour just seems to fade away, like its signs.
Today's tours of Cincinnati
Today, there are online options for touring the area.
The Cincinnati Experience is one. It's a collaboration between Visit Cincy, the Chamber, and the Regional Economic Development Initiative (REDI). It was created to improve the area's visibility.
Executive Director Anastasia Mileham says they found early on, people were getting their information about cities online, so Cincinnati Experience launched an online campaign. She says one section of the website is devoted to tours.
"There are so many of them in Cincinnati, from underground tours, food and beverage tours, bus tours, tours by air, helicopter, tours by water on BB Riverboats, there's mural tours," she says. "There are so many and there are a lot of different companies that offer them."
One of those is the Brewing Heritage Trail, which highlights the history of beer in Over-the-Rhine. Executive Director Aaron Deininger says they sell tickets for guided tours, but there are other free options as well.
"In 2019, we established Phase One of the Brewing Heritage Trail which is a physical trail in the neighborhood that has signage in front of historic brewing structures, art installations that are beer themed, that sort of thing, so people can take a walking tour."
Deininger says in 2024, Phase One of the free Brewing Trail app dropped.
"It covers the same geographic area as the physical trail but then it expands on it," he says. "Because you can only put so much information and imagery on a sign, whereas the app, we have the ability to go deeper, [it] dives into history."
He says the second phase of the trail will double the number of locations featured in the app.
There's another app dealing with local history. The Freedom Journey App is tied to the America's River Roots festival in October, but it's already working now.
River Roots ambassador Kyla Woods says the app points out people and places important to the Underground Railroad along the Ohio River in West Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio.
"There are those preset tours that you can kind of plug-and-play. Or you can create your own adventure, so if you only have two hours or you have five hours, you can curate what that's going to look like for you through your phone, and through the app," she says. "So we're trying to make it as user-friendly, as engaging as possible."
Once the River Roots festival is over, the app will stick around, under the wing of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center.
ArtWorks offers tours and has a free map showing the location all of the Downtown murals, listing their titles and their artists. South of the Ohio River, Northern Kentucky Art Walks offers the same.
All around downtown Cincinnati, there are signs pointing the way to landmarks and attractions. Randie Adam with Visit Cincy says those are important.
"Excellent signage is definitely part of the visitor experience in making sure that people can find their way confidently around Downtown, but also get to know our stories," she says. "We are definitely in discussions of making sure that people can navigate our region and get the best guidance for learning about us but also making their way and finding their locations."
She says Visit Cincy also puts maps of Downtown and the entire area in hotel rooms to help visitors.
A spokesman for the Cincinnati Regional Chamber of Commerce says they know of no plans to update the old Queen City Tour.
The Cincinnati Hamilton County Public Library does have a couple of copies of the 1996 QCT pamphlet, with the map inside. Most of the signs may be gone, but the points of interest are not.
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