Toledo, a city and port of entry, the county-seat of Lucas county, Ohio, U.S.A., on both banks of the Maumee river, about 4 m. from Maumee Bay, Lake Erie, and about 95 m. W. of Cleveland. Pop. (1900), 131,822, of whom 1710 were negroes, and 27,822 were foreign-born, including 12,373 Germans, 2449 English Canadians, and 1636 English; (1910 census) 168,497. Area, 28.57 sq. m. Toledo is served by the Ann Arbor, the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton, the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St Louis, the Detroit, Toledo & Milwaukee, the Detroit & Toledo Shore Line, the Hocking Valley, the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern, the Michigan Central, the Pennsylvania, the Pere Marquette, the Toledo, St Louis & Western, the Wabash, and the Wheeling & Lake Erie railways, by a "belt line" (30 m. long), the Toledo Railway & Terminal Company, by ten interurban electric railways (about 585 m.), and by the Wabash & Erie and the Miami & Erie canals. A channel 400 ft. wide and 21 ft. deep admits the largest vessels from Lake Erie to the city. Six passenger and freight steamship lines communicate with Cleveland, Buffalo, Sandusky, Detroit, Port Huron, Alpena, Mackinac, Georgian Bay and other points on the Great Lakes, and the city has 25 m. of docks. The city park system includes Ottawa Park (280 acres), Bay View Park (202 acres), Riverside Park (118 acres), Central Grove Park (loo acres), Collins Park (90 acres), Walbridge Park (67 acres), with a zoological collection, Navarre Park (53 acres), several smaller parks and triangles, and a boulevard, 18 m. long (incomplete in 1910), connecting the parks. Noteworthy public buildings are the County Court-house, the Public Library (about 85,000 volumes in 1910), the Soldiers' Memorial Building, the Toledo Club and the Toledo Museum of Art (1901). The city is the seat of Toledo University, including Toledo Medical College (1880), which is affiliated, for clinical purposes, with the Toledo Hospital (1876). There are numerous hospitals and charities.
Toledo is the port of entry for the Miami customs district and is an important shipping point for the iron and copper ores and lumber from the Lake Superior and Michigan regions, for petroleum, coal, fruit, and grain and clover-seed. In 1909 the imports of the port were valued at 042,286 and the exports at $600,794. The capital invested in manufacturing under the factory system in 1905 was $3 8, 6 43,39 0 (62.4% more than that of 1900). The value of the factory products in 1905 was $44,823,004 (40.2% more than in 1900). Foundry and machine-shop products ($4,087,497) were the most valuable manufactures in 1905. In flour and grist mill products (value in 1905, $3,676,290) Toledo is the most important city of the state. Other important manufactures in 1905 were petroleum products ($2,006,484); lumber and planing mill products ($1,604,274); women's clothing ($1,477,648); children's carriages and sleds ($ 1 ,4 6 5,599); car-shop construction and repairs, by steam railway companies ($1,366,506); carriages and wagons ($ 1, 22 5,387); structural iron work ($1,102,035); agricultural implements, bicycles, automobiles (a recent and growing industry), plate and cut-glass (made largely from a fine quality of sand found near the city), tobacco, spices and malted liquors. The building of boats, and of large vessels is also an important industry. At Rossford (pop. about 400), a suburb, is the large plant of the Ford plate-glass works. The water supply is derived from the Maumee river and is filtered by a municipal filtration plant.
The administration of the city became famous after 1897 when Samuel Milton Jones (1846-1904), a manufacturer of oil machinery, was elected mayor by the Republican party; he was re-elected on a non-partisan ticket in 1899, 1901 and 1903, and introduced business methods into the city government. His honesty and sincerity in business and politics gained him the nickname "Golden Rule" Jones. The independent movement which he started was carried on under Brand Whitlock (b. 1869), a lawyer and writer who was mayor of Toledo in 1906-1911. The city council has 16 members, three elected at large and the others by wards, and there are boards of public service, public safety, public health and education.
The site of Toledo lies within an immense tract of land, constituting sixteen reservations, acquired by the United States government from several Indian tribes in 1795, and a stockade fort, called Fort Industry, was built here about 1800. In 1817 two companies bought from the government a portion of the tract, at the mouth of Swan Creek, including most of the land now occupied by Toledo. Upon the tract farthest up-stream the town of Port Lawrence was laid out. (in 1817). In 1832 a. rival company laid out the town of Vistula on the tract immediately below Port Lawrence, in the following year these towns were united and were named Toledo, and in 1837 the city was incorporated. The "Toledo War" was a dispute over the boundary between Ohio and Michigan. When Ohio Territory was organized in 1800 its northern boundary was described as a line drawn from the southern extremity of Lake Michigan due east to the Pennsylvania line, and the official map of the time placed the southern end of Lake Michigan at 42° 20' N. lat. The state constitution adopted in 1802 followed the enabling act in accepting this line, but made the proviso that if it should not intersect Lake Erie east of the mouth of the Miami river, then the northern boundary should be a line from the southern end of Lake Michigan to the most northern cape of Maumee Bay and thence to the Territorial line, and to the Pennsylvania line. In 1805 the Territory of Michigan was organized with a southern. boundary in accordance with the line extending due east from the southern end of Lake Michigan; and therefore there was in dispute a strip of land, about 5 m. wide at its western end and about 8 m. wide at its eastern end, a rich agricultural region, stretching across portions of what are now Lucas, Fulton and Williams counties, and including all of what are now Ashtabula and Lake counties, and portions of Geauga and Cuyahoga counties, in Ohio. Within the belt lay what is now Toledo, and its great importance as a lake port was even then clearly recognized. On the 29th of January 1818 the Ohio legislature accepted the "Harris line" (surveyed in 1817 in accordance with the proviso of the state constitution) as the northern boundary of the state. Acting on the recommendation of Governor Robert Lucas (1781-1853), on the 23rd of February 1835 the Ohio legislature passed an Act extending the northern boundaries of what were then Wood, Henry and Williams counties (lying partly within the disputed strip) north to the Harris line, and providing for the organization of new townships within this added territory, and for the appointment of three commissioners to re-mark the line. Upon the appointment (March 9, 1835) by Governor Lucas of the three commissioners to re-mark the Harris line, Governor Stevens T. Mason of Michigan ordered out a division of Michigan militia, which near the end of March entered and took possession of Toledo. A division of Ohio militia marched to Perrysburg, on the Maumee river, about 10 m. south of Toledo; but both militias disbanded when Richard Rush, of Philadelphia, and Benjamin C. Howard, of Baltimore, appeared at Toledo as peace emissaries, appointed by President Jackson. In April several members of the party accompanying the Ohio commissioners. were arrested by Michigan militia. In June the Ohio legislature created Lucas county, mostly from the disputed territory, and made Toledo its county-seat. President Jackson now urged Michigan to discontinue interfering with the re-marking of the Harris line, and requested Ohio to postpone putting into effect the Act of February 1835; but as petty outbreaks continued throughout the summer and an Ohio judge and court officers at Toledo were arrested in September, he peremptorily removed Governor Mason from office. In June 1836 Congress decided the dispute in favour of Ohio, and in 1837 Michigan was admitted to the Union as a state upon condition of relinquishing all claim to the disputed territory, but received what is now known as the Upper Peninsula (the land between Lakes Superior, Huron and Michigan).
