The Forest City
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The "Forest City" is a nickname or alternate toponym for Cleveland, Ohio.
The inspiration for the name is a famous reference to Cleveland, describing a highly sophisticated society amid a heavily forested environment in Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, which describes the Frenchman's observations of the United States in the 1830's. Thereafter, the earliest applications of the name are unclear. Some say that Timothy Smead, editor of the short-lived Ohio City Argus first put the name to use. However, many believe that William Case, secretary of the Cleveland Horticultural Society and Cleveland's mayor from 1850 to 1851, carried the name forward. Case was well known for encouraging the planting of fruit trees, and thus the name stuck.
In the late 1800s, the City's baseball team donned the nickname. The first major league baseball game played in the National Association was between the Cleveland Forest Citys and Fort Wayne Kekiongas on May 4, 1871.
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