Upper Arlington (often known by its initials U.A.) is a city in Franklin County, Ohio, United States, on the northwest side of the Columbus metropolitan area. As of the 2020 census, the population was 36,800. The Old Arlington neighborhood is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
At a Glance
- County: Franklin County
- State: Ohio
History of Upper Arlington
The land on which present day Upper Arlington sits was first known to be inhabited by the Adena people. Centuries later the Wyandot lived there, eventually being expelled after the U.S. Government gave land grants to Revolutionary War soldiers in lieu of pay. Property originally bestowed in this area to Elijah Backus, Jonathan Dayton and Andrew Marker was sold as farm property to a number of different families in the 1800s.
Brothers and real estate developers King and Ben Thompson founded Upper Arlington. They purchased the original 840 acres of land, south of present day Lane Avenue, from James T. Miller in 1913. It was directly adjacent to the Marble Cliff Quarry Co. The development proceeded according to the Garden City, inspired plan by landscape architect William Pitkin Jr. They first referred to the area as the "Country Club District" modeled after the Country Club development in Kansas City, but by 1917 the community had become known as "Upper Arlington" in reference to its southern neighbor of Arlington (now known as Marble Cliff).
In 1916 development was interrupted when the National Guard used the area as a temporary training camp called Camp Willis so named after Ohio’s governor at the time, Frank B. Willis. Thousands of servicemen were trained at Camp Willis and then dispatched against Pancho Villa on the Mexican border. The camp was dismantled by September 1916.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Upper Arlington, Ohio, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.