Area code 513

The regions shown in blue are in Ohio.

North American area code 513 serves southwest Ohio including Cincinnati and many surrounding cities, such as Forest Park, Hamilton, Lebanon, West Chester, Mason, Maineville, Middletown, Norwood, Oxford, Harrison, Cleves, Miamitown, Trenton, and St. Paris

History

Area code 513 is one of the original area codes established in 1947, and originally designated a numbering plan area that comprised the entire southwest quadrant of the state. In 1996, however, most of the northern and eastern portion of the old 513 territory, including Dayton, was split into area code 937. The split came about mainly due to the proliferation of cell phones and pagers. The supply of numbers was further limited because the Cincinnati LATA extends some distance into southeastern Indiana, and several numbers in northern Kentucky's 606 (now in 859) and southern Indiana's 812 (now part of an overlay with 930) were not available for use. Indeed, years after the introduction of number portability, 513 is still used to this day by a large number of cell phone users on the Kentucky and Indiana sides of the Cincinnati area.

A new area code 283 was assigned to overlay the current 513 area, but the implementation has been delayed as area code 513 is not yet depleted of available numbers.^[1] As projected, 283 will not need to be implemented until at least 2024.^[2] This makes Cincinnati one of the largest cities where seven-digit dialing is still possible.

Originally, 513 was slated to cover the western third of Iowa—basically, everything west of Des Moines. Cities designated for coverage included Sioux City and Council Bluffs.^[3]

Very similar to how Manhattan is known as "212", Cincinnati is sometimes colloquially referred to as the "513".

See also

• NANPA Area Code Map of Ohio
• List of exchanges from AreaCodeDownload.com, 513 Area Code

References

Coordinates: 39°15′N 84°30′W / 39.250°N 84.500°W / 39.250; -84.500