US Map / Cities / Toledo

Toledo Map

Toledo sits where the Maumee River enters Lake Erie, on ground that two states went to the brink of war over and that farmers had to drain before they could plow it.

Where is Toledo?

Toledo is in northwestern Ohio, on Maumee Bay at the western end of Lake Erie, with the Michigan line only a few miles north. It is about 60 miles south of Detroit, roughly 110 miles west of Cleveland, some 145 miles north of Columbus, and about 95 miles northeast of Fort Wayne. The Ohio Turnpike and Interstate 75 cross here, which keeps a great deal of freight moving through the city.

Toledo at a glance

Toledo in Ohio

Toledo is the seat of Lucas County and the fourth-largest city in Ohio, behind Columbus, Cleveland and Cincinnati — four cities spread almost evenly around the state, as the Ohio county map and its 88 counties make clear. The northern boundary of Lucas County is the old Toledo Strip: Ohio and Michigan both claimed it in the 1830s, militias were raised, and Congress settled it by giving the strip to Ohio and the Upper Peninsula to Michigan. The Ohio state page has the rest of the border story.

The Maumee, the port and the Black Swamp

The Maumee drains the largest watershed of any river feeding the Great Lakes, and Toledo grew at its mouth as the transfer point between lake freighters and the railroads — coal, grain and iron ore still move over its docks. Inland, the flat country was the Great Black Swamp, a forested wetland left behind by a glacial lake, effectively impassable until ditching and tile drainage in the later 1800s turned it into some of the most productive farmland in the Midwest. That drainage has a modern consequence: nutrients running off those fields down the Maumee feed the summer algal blooms in the shallow western basin of Lake Erie, which is where Toledo takes its drinking water.

Cities near Toledo

The nearby lake and river cities are Detroit, Cleveland, Fort Wayne, Columbus and Buffalo. For the lake itself, see the Great Lakes page.