Why is Cincinnati called the Queen City
Losantiville, on the river Ohio was found in the year 1788, but in 1790, General Arthur St. Clair, the governor of the time, changed the name of the city from Losantiville to Cincinnati in dedication to the “Society of Cincinnati”, which was an organization that consisted of officers of the Revolution. Cincinnati soon became the number one port on river Ohio and it was greatly used for shipping various goods to the eastern part of the United States and also other countries later on. Before the civil war halted the progress of Cincinnati, it had become the largest city in the entire Midwest region and was certainly the fastest developing and one of the richest cities in the whole country. It was during this period of growth between 1835 and 1850 that Cincinnati came to be popular as “The Queen City”.
It is believed by some and most of the citizens of Cincinnati, that the name Queen City was imparted onto it by its own citizens who realized that their city was growing very fast and was among the richest cities in the country. They took pride in what Cincinnati was becoming in terms of commerce and decided that it deserved nothing short of a nickname as grand as “the Queen City”.
The book titled “Cincinnati”, authored by Edward Mansfield and Benjamin Drake, called Cincinnati “Queen of the West” for the first time on a printed book. “Queen of the West” was again the name by which Henry Longfellow addressed Cincinnati in his poem, “Catawba Wine” in 1854.
Although Cincinnati is most popular as the queen city even today, there were other nicknames given to it as well. “Porkopolis” was the number one pork packing city in the world, ahead of Dublin and Belfast, both previously the primary pork packing centers.
There are other names of the queen city that came into existence in a few years down the line, like “The London of America” or “The Paris of America”, but “Queen of the West” or The Queen City” still remains the most popular nickname of Cincinnati.