Nick Swartsell admits it:
“I’m a huge map nerd,” he says. “I’m a map person.”
Swartsell, author of the new book Cincinnati in 50 Maps, likes to explore new cities by foot for a couple weeks, “then I look at a map to connect the dots.”
He connects lots of dots around the Queen City.
Cincinnati in 50 Maps includes graphics illustrating everything from earthworks, early roads and original river routes to topography; our multiple neighborhood downtowns; abandoned streets, subway routes and inclines; and where to find chili joints and goetta.
Swartsell — one of my reporting colleagues at WVXU-FM — and cartographer Andy Woodruff spent a year trimming their wish list to 50 for the book from Belt Publishing, founded in 2013 in Cleveland to “promote voices from the Rust Belt.” It was acquired in 2023 by Arcadia Publishing, which has released more than 12,000 American history and culture titles.
“We had more than 100 maps, and more ideas on the drawing board. It was really hard to narrow it down to 50,” Swartsell says.
He drew up an initial list. Woodruff added some ideas. Then they each came up with more. “We worked together on deciding which ones would make the final cut and how we might condense multiple maps into one on a couple occasions. There are still some I wish we’d been able to include,” says Swartsell, who edited the Cincinnati Neighborhood Guidebook for Belt Publishing in 2022.
They brought an outsiders’ curiosity to the project. Swartsell, a Camp Washington resident, grew up in Butler County’s Hamilton and Middletown areas and graduated from Trenton’s Edgewood High School in 2000. Woodruff grew up in the Dayton, Ohio, area and made frequent trips to Riverfront Stadium to watch Reds games.
“It was maps of Cincinnati that helped get him (Woodruff) into cartography in the first place,” the book says.
Cincinnati in 50 Maps provides several interesting looks at the area long before the 1788 settlement of Losantiville grew up around Fort Washington.
“Cincinnati’s Indigenous Earthworks” shows the mound mapped by Daniel Drake in 1816 that was located along present day Vine Street between 4th and 5th streets and the Hilton Cincinnati Netherland Plaza. The “Ancient Waterways” shows how the “deep stage Ohio River” looped far north of the city, and the Licking River flowed north to meet the Ohio near present day St. Bernard.
The “Annexation: Geography and Politics,” and “Cincinnati’s Many Downtowns” maps connect the dots on how Cincinnati gobbled up the independent communities of Clifton, Hyde Park, Westwood, Linwood, Avondale and others.
“The Highways’ Toll” shows how interstates 75 and 71 wiped out huge tracts of the city, and displaced more than 25,000 residents, Swartsell writes.
“The federal government’s highway construction projects in the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s were famously destructive, especially to American cities’ Black communities. Cincinnati paid an especially high toll for its highways . . . (with) the clearance of the southern half of the West End for I-75 and associated urban renewal projects,” he writes.
In the 50 maps are such nuggets as Cincinnati’s 25-year gap in life expectancy (from 87.8 years in Mt. Adams to 62.9 years in Lower Price Hill/Queensgate) and the return of turtles, blue herons and bald eagles after many years of efforts to clean up the Mill Creek.
Once called “the most endangered urban waterway in the country,” the Mill Creek is “becoming a lush, natural jewel — something Cincinnatians would have found astonishing just a few decades ago,” Swartsell writes.
Cincinnati in 50 Maps (hardcover; $30) is part of Belt’s series of “50 Maps” books for Columbus, Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Detroit. It’s available at most Cincinnati bookstores, on Amazon and the Arcadia Publishing website.
John Kiesewetter's reporting is independent. Cincinnati Public Radio only edits his articles for style and grammar.
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