Dayton, the seat of Montgomery County in Ohio, was founded on April 1, 1796 and named for Captain Jonathan Dayton, a signer of the U.S. Constitution. Located in the Miami Valley, just north of Cincinnati, Dayton stands at the confluence of the Great Miami River, the Stillwater and Mad rivers, and Wolf Creek. These rivers wind through the downtown area, with a total of 28 bridges crossing them. The downtown streets are broad and straight, owing to Dayton's design as a marketing and shipping center. In fact, many of the streets were at one time barge canals.

Dayton is prominently known as the "Gem City." Nobody knows for certain where this nickname comes from, but it likely originated in the 1840s from an article in a Cincinnati newspaper which read "In a small bend of the Great Miami River, with canals on the east and south, it can be fairly said, without infringing on the rights of others, that Dayton is the gem of all our interior towns."