Forest Park is a city in Hamilton County, Ohio, United States. It is a suburb of Cincinnati. The population was 20,189 at the 2020 census, making it the second most populous city in Hamilton County.
At a Glance
- County: Hamilton County
- State: Ohio
History of Forest Park
The City of Forest Park, Ohio was founded in 1956, two years after private developers Marvin Warner and Joseph Kanter purchased 3,400 acres of 5,930 acres north of Cincinnati originally set aside in 1935 by the Resettlement Administration under President Franklin D. Roosevelt to relocate struggling urban and rural families to one of three such communities planned by the government called Greenbelt towns.
The Greenbelt concept was abandoned in 1949 and the as yet undeveloped acreage of Greenhills, Ohio, which had opened in 1938, became available for purchase by the Warner Kanter Corporation in 1954. After two years of planning they opened homes for purchase in the first residential area of Forest Park, the C section, in March 1956.
After growing to a population of 4800 in 1960 and incorporation as a village in 1961, then achieving city status in 1968, Forest Park intentionally became an “open city,” regularly adopting and passing resolutions and ordinances welcoming citizens regardless of race, creed or national origin, a policy intended to maintain the city’s commitment to diversity.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Forest Park, Ohio, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.