Urbana, a city and the county seat of Champaign co., Ohio, at the intersection of the Atlantic and Great Western, the Pennsylvania Central, and the Sandusky, Dayton, and Cincinnati railroads, 40 m. W. N. W. of Columbus, and 76 m. N. N. E. of Cincinnati; pop. in 1850, 2,020; in 1860, 3,429; in 1870, 4,276; in 1875, locally estimated at 7,000. It is situated in the midst of a fertile country, and is handsomely built. The trade is important. The largest manufacturing concern is the United States rolling stock company, which employs from 300 to 500 hands. Other important establishments are a boot and shoe factory, a tannery, an agricultural machine shop, a stove foundery, two carriage factories, three tobacco works, a woollen mill, two broom factories, two wagon factories, three lumber yards and flouring mills, and a hub and spoke factory, together employing 300 hands. There are three national banks, with a capital of $100,000 each, and one life and one fire insurance company. The high school building cost $90,000, and accommodates 400 pupils. The city has five free public schools, a Roman Catholic school, and a public library. Urbana university (Swedenborgian), founded in 1851, in 1874-'5 had 4 instructors and a library of 5,000 volumes.

A daily and two weekly newspapers and a monthly periodical are published. There are 12 churches, viz.: Baptist (2), Episcopal, Lutheran, Methodist (3), Presbyterian, Roman Catholic, Swedenborgian, United Presbyterian, and a mission church.