Cleveland ( KLEEV lənd) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio, located along the southern shore of Lake Erie. It is across the lake from the Canadian province of Ontario, and is approximately 60 miles (97 kilometers) west of the Ohio, Pennsylvania state line. Cleveland is the most populous city on Lake Erie, the 2nd most populous city in Ohio (after Columbus), and the 53rd most populous city in the United States, with a population of 372,624 at the 2020 census. It also serves as the county seat of Cuyahoga County. The Greater Cleveland metropolitan area, with an estimated 2.17 million residents, is the 34th largest metropolitan area in the U.S.
At a Glance
- County: Cuyahoga County
- County seat of Cuyahoga County
- State: Ohio
History of Cleveland
Cleveland was established on July 22, 1796, by surveyors of the Connecticut Land Company when they laid out Connecticut’s Western Reserve into townships and a capital city. They named the settlement "Cleaveland" after their leader, General Moses Cleaveland, a veteran of the American Revolutionary War. Cleaveland oversaw the New England, style design of the plan for what would become the modern downtown area, centered on Public Square. The town’s name was often shortened to "Cleveland", including by Cleaveland’s original surveyors. A myth emerged that the spelling was altered by The Cleveland Advertiser to fit the name on the newspaper’s masthead.
The first permanent European settler in Cleveland was Lorenzo Carter, who arrived in May 1797 and built a cabin on the banks of the Cuyahoga River. The emerging community served as an important supply post for the U.S. during the Battle of Lake Erie in the War of 1812. Largely through the efforts of the settlement’s first lawyer, Alfred Kelley, the village of Cleveland was incorporated on December 23, 1814.
Despite the nearby swampy lowlands and harsh winters, the town’s waterfront on Lake Erie was advantageous, giving it access to Great Lakes trade. It grew rapidly after the 1832 completion of the Ohio and Erie Canal, which linked the Ohio River and the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean via the Erie Canal and Hudson River, and later via the Saint Lawrence Seaway. The town’s growth continued with added railroad links. In 1836, Cleveland, then only on the eastern banks of the Cuyahoga, was incorporated as a city; John W. Willey was elected its first mayor. The neighboring municipality of Ohio City was a major rival to Cleveland until its annexation by the city in 1854.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Cleveland, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.