The American Innovation $1 Coin representing Ohio honors the Underground Railroad. The Underground Railroad was a loose and decentralized network of individuals, families, friends, and churches that covertly helped enslaved African Americans escape to freedom. The National Park Service recognizes over a dozen routes through Ohio which stand as monuments to individuals fleeing slavery and those who helped them along their way.
Other states had active lines within the informal Underground Railroad network, but Ohio’s role was pivotal. Ohio was the southernmost free-state that bordered the northernmost slave states of Kentucky and (then) Virginia. It had an estimated 3,000 miles of trails throughout the state with safe houses, or “stations,” that aided the runaways’ flights to freedom.
