SR 32 begins at a junction with Columbia Parkway (U.S. Route 50, US 50) in eastern Cincinnati, near the border between the neighborhoods of Linwood, Mount Lookout, and Columbia-Tusculum, in the area of Lunken Field.

It follows Beechmont Avenue, running concurrently with SR 125, until it crosses the Little Miami River, where it turns north on Batavia Road and continues past Newtown.

Just before Belpre, US 50 and Corridor D turn south, crossing the Ohio River on the Blennerhassett Island Bridge toward Parkersburg, West Virginia.

The Appalachian Highway ends just west of the Ohio River; SR 7 turns north, remaining a limited-access divided highway, while SR 32 continues as a surface street for a few blocks until meeting the Memorial Bridge, a toll bridge across the Ohio River into Parkersburg.

The Batavia Turnpike and Miami Bridge Company was incorporated and chartered by the state of Ohio.

It built a road, which was "about finished" as of 1841, beginning at the Wooster Turnpike (Eastern Avenue), crossing the Little Miami River on the Union Bridge, and turning east to Batavia.

[2] The state relocated the road between Mount Carmel and Batavia as a four-lane divided highway in the early 1960s, several years after the parallel SR 125 was widened (but not realigned).

Improvement of the rest of the road did not take place until after it was added to the Appalachian Development Highway System in 1965.

[2] In 1998, the Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) inspected a section of SR 32 in Jackson County due to repeated pavement failure and pothole subsidence featured in the median.

[12] In response to the tests, ODOT closed the highway 1.5 miles (2.4 km) east of Wellston and began excavating the roadway to remediate the mine subsidence in November 1998.

[20] The portion of SR 32 in Clermont, Brown, Highland, Adams, and Pike counties was under consideration as the eastward continuation of I-74 from Cincinnati to Piketon in 1991, where it would have connected with I-73 as part of the North-South I-73/I-74 Corridor created in the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) of 1991.

[citation needed] A construction project that is a part of the Eastern Corridor, is redesigning SR 32 from I-275 to Batavia.

[21] The plan is to remove all signalized intersections east of I-275 and eventually replace it with a limited-access highway to Batavia.