City of Monroe / Monroe Historical Society

Side A: Nathanial Sackett (1768-1854) and John H. Piatt (1781-1820) platted Monroe in 1817, naming it for President James Monroe. Monroe was a stagecoach stop between Cincinnati and Dayton and grew to be a rural village surrounded by farms and dotted with small factories, incorporating in 1907. Beginning in the mid-1950s and coinciding with the construction of Interstate 75, the village expanded geographically, through the annexation of surrounding farmland, and continued to grow in population. Monroe officially became a city in 1995, when its population exceeded 5,000 people (5,380). As of its bicentennial year of 2017, Monroe was home to more than 13,000. Side B: The Monroe Historical Society was founded in May 1967 to rescue and relocate the c. 1800 Pioneer Log Cabin to Monroe Community Park. More than 50 years later, the society remains dedicated to preserving area history and operates three sites: the cabin, the 1910 General Store, which it occupied in 1990, and the society’s museum and headquarters, opened in 2010.