Lakewood is a city in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, United States, on the southern shore of Lake Erie. Established in 1889, it is one of Cleveland’s historical streetcar suburbs and part of the Cleveland metropolitan area. The population was 50,942 at the 2020 census, making it the third largest city in Cuyahoga County, behind Cleveland and Parma.
At a Glance
- County: Cuyahoga County
- State: Ohio
History of Lakewood
The area now called Lakewood was populated by the Ottawa, Potawatomi, Chippewa, Wyandot, Munsee, Delaware and Shawnee tribes until the Treaty of Ft. Industry pushed them west in 1805. Prior to the treaty, American settlers were prohibited from moving west of the Cuyahoga River. The treaty ceded 500,000 acres of some of the tribes’ land to the United States for about $18,000 or 3.5 cents/acre. The Shawnee and Seneca, living with the Wyandot, were to get $1000 "…every year forever hereafter."
In 1806, the area was formally surveyed as Rockport Township, Township 7, Range 14, of the Connecticut Western Reserve. It was purchased from the Connecticut Land Company by a syndicate of six men headed by Judson Canfield on April 4, 1807, for $26,084. In 1818, permanent settlement began with the arrival from Connecticut of James Nicholson. Other early pioneers included Jared Kirtland and Mars Wagar. Settlements were mostly along Detroit Avenue, a toll road operated by the Rockport Plank Company from 1848 to 1901, with large farms and properties extending north to Lake Erie. Making bricks and planting orchards were among the most prolific occupations until natural gas and crude oil wells were developed in the early 1880s. By 1819, 18 families lived in Rockport Township. Early settlers sustained their lives through farming. The land was ideal for fruit farming and many vineyards began to emerge. Current street names reflect this history such as Orchard Grove and Blossom Park. The most common occupations in Lakewood were farming and the building trades.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Lakewood, Ohio, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.