Corn Courtesy of Harrold Watters, Ohio State University Extension, Agriculture and Natural Resources
Photo Courtesy of Ken Aschliman

Corn was the most important crop grown on Ohio’s cleared forestlands. Corn had been grown in North America for thousands of years before the arrival of the first colonists. The long, slender northern flints once dominated the region that is now the eastern and northern United States, while gourdseed (also known as southern dents) dominated in the south. During the 1800s, these two types were brought together when farmers from both the southeast and the northeast began to settle in Ohio and the Middle West. Among these settlers was the family of Robert Reid, who farmed in southern Ohio before moving further west. An accidental cross between northern flint and gourdseed in one of his fields in 1847 led to selections that became known as Reid’s Yellow Dent. The winner of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition corn show, Reid’s Yellow Dent became the most successful corn variety of all time and various strains serve as a base for some of the most widely used corn hybrids to this day.