The Michigan game. Just mention this in Columbus and you can see emotions stir and blood pressures rise.
But why is the Ohio/Michigan rivalry one of the most intense and most well-known rivalries in the country? The Michigan vs. Ohio saga may have started in 1803.
The Toledo War
Most people don't know there was almost a war over Toledo. Toledo, Michigan, that is.
According to the Michigan Historical Museum System, Toledo, Michigan first appeared on a map in 1835. The village of Toledo and a 450-square-mile strip of land along the Michigan/Ohio border became known as the "Toledo Strip", claimed by the state of Ohio and the Michigan Territory. The original east-west state line between Ohio and Michigan was known as the Ordinance Line and was later altered by the Fulton Line and Talcott Line that ran a straight course due east of the southernmost tip of Lake Michigan to the southwestern shore of Lake Erie. (In western Lucas County there is Old State Line Rd. serving as a reminder of the Toledo War.) The state of Ohio had surveyed its' own northern border upon admission to statehood that generally followed the current Ohio/Michigan border.
The various surveys resulted in a 50-year dispute over the Toledo Strip, which was only five miles wide at the Indiana border and eight miles wide at Lake Erie. Although it has been reported that no shots were fired, Ohio and Michigan militia units were sent to the Toledo Strip between 1835 and 1837. But luck was on Ohio's side. At the time, the Compromise of 1820 allowed the admission of one slave state for one free state. Michigan and Missouri were to be admitted as states, but only when Michigan surrendered the Toledo Strip to Ohio. The reason? Probably because a Presidential election was coming up. State of Ohio residents could vote, while Michigan Territory residents could not.
While the Michigan Territory originally vowed to fight the surrender, it realized the hopelessness of the contest, and on December 14, 1836, officially conceded the Toledo Strip to Ohio. In return, the new state of Michigan was given the remainder of the unorganized Upper Peninsula by Congress. Toledo became Toledo, Ohio, and victorious Ohio governor Robert Lucas was honored with the name Lucas County, the eastern portion of the Toledo Strip.
