Qualla: Athens

Athens: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MissvainOrignial author: User:Km.tigerlily, CC BY-SA 3.0. The school came first. Before Athens, Ohio, had a town hall or a bank or a permanent population worth counting, Congress had set aside two townships in the Ohio Country specifically to support a college. The Ohio Company of Associates - the New England land speculators who pushed for the Northwest Ordinance - had insisted that any deal granting them land would include a reservation for education, and the 1787 charter eventually produced two contiguous townships set aside for what became Ohio University. The town of Athens was settled in 1797 to give the school a host community. The university was chartered in 1804 but did not open until 1808, when three students began instruction. Two hundred and twenty years later, Ohio University enrolls more than 30,000 students, and a town of roughly 23,000 wraps around its campus on a series of low hills above the Hocking River.

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Image: MissvainOrignial author: User:Km.tigerlily | CC BY-SA 3.0

Athens: Founded for a College

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bwsmith84 (talk), CC BY 3.0. The chartering of Ohio University in 1804 made it the first college established in the Northwest Territory and one of the earliest public universities in the United States. The early years were modest: a single brick building on what is now the College Green, a handful of student...

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Image: Bwsmith84 (talk) | CC BY 3.0

Athens: Court Street and the Bars

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chamberednautilus, CC BY-SA 4.0. Uptown Athens centers on Court Street, a three-block commercial corridor that runs parallel to and just north of the College Green. The street is famously dense with bars - one running joke claims Athens has more bars per capita than any other city in Ohio, and the actual density...

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Image: Chamberednautilus | CC BY-SA 4.0

Athens: The Hills and the Hocking

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wayne National Forest, CC BY 2.0. The town occupies a series of low hills wrapped by the Hocking River, with the campus on a slight rise above the floodplain. The Hocking Valley narrows here as it bends toward the Ohio River, and the surrounding terrain - the foothills of the Allegheny Plateau - rises into the fo...

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Image: Wayne National Forest | CC BY 2.0

Athens: Coal, Then Mental Hospital, Then Recovery

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ed!(talk)(Hall of Fame), CC BY-SA 3.0. Athens County's twentieth-century economic story was difficult. The surrounding coal industry boomed and then collapsed by mid-century, leaving large parts of the county economically depressed - the same conditions that justified federal acquisition of what became the Wayne Natio...

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Image: Ed!(talk)(Hall of Fame) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Athens: Flying Over the College Town

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit George23520, CC0. From the air, Athens reads as a compact red-brick campus surrounded by a slightly less compact town, both wrapped in the loop of the Hocking River. The College Green is the obvious visual anchor: a few acres of grass framed by Cutler Hall, the oldest college building in the North...

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Image: George23520 | CC0