Toledo War - Creation of The Toledo Strip

Creation of The Toledo Strip

The location of the border was contested throughout the early 19th century. Residents of the Port of Miami — which would later become Toledo — urged the Ohio government to resolve the border issue. The Ohio legislature, in turn, passed repeated resolutions and requests asking Congress to take up the matter. In 1812, Congress approved a request for an official survey of the line. Delayed because of the War of 1812, it was only after Indiana's admission to the Union in 1816 that work on the survey commenced. U.S. Surveyor General Edward Tiffin, who was in charge of the survey, was a former Ohio governor.

As a result, Tiffin employed surveyor William Harris to survey not the Ordinance Line, but the line as described in the Ohio Constitution of 1802. When completed, the "Harris Line" placed the mouth of the Maumee River completely in Ohio. When the results of the survey were made public, Michigan territorial governor Lewis Cass was unhappy, since it was not based on the Congressionally approved Ordinance Line. In a letter to Tiffin, Cass stated that the Ohio-biased survey "is only adding strength to the strong, and making the weak still weaker."

In response, Michigan commissioned a second survey that was carried out by John A. Fulton. The Fulton survey was based upon the original 1787 Ordinance Line, and after measuring the line eastward from Lake Michigan to Lake Erie, it found the Ohio boundary to be south of the mouth of the Maumee River. The region between the Harris and Fulton survey lines formed what is now known as the "Toledo Strip." This ribbon of land between northern Ohio and southern Michigan spanned a region five to eight miles (8 to 13 km) wide, of which both jurisdictions claimed sovereignty. While Ohio refused to cede its claim, Michigan quietly occupied it for the next several years, setting up local governments, building roads, and collecting taxes throughout the area.