Munroe Falls is a city in east central Summit County, Ohio, United States, along the Cuyahoga River. The population was 5,044 at the 2020 census. It is a suburb of Akron and is part of the Akron metropolitan area.
At a Glance
- County: Summit County
- State: Ohio
History of Munroe Falls
Like much of the Connecticut Western Reserve, the area that makes up present day Munroe Falls was previously inhabited by various tribes of American Indians. When the Western Reserve began being surveyed in 1796, what is now Munroe Falls was mostly in the southern part of the survey township Town 3, Range 10 (later to be Stow Township), then a part of Washington County before being placed in the new Jefferson County the following year. In 1800, it was made part of Trumbull County, which followed the boundaries of the Western Reserve, and in 1808, the area was made part of Portage County.
The first settlers in present day Munroe Falls, a group of around 40 people including Francis Kelsey and William Stow, came in 1809. William Stow built a log house to serve as his residence at what is now the northwest corner of Ohio State Route 91 and Munroe Falls Avenue. Kelsey built a sawmill on the south side of the Cuyahoga River and a gristmill was built on the north side. The initial name of the new village was Kelsey’s Mills (also Kelsey Mills). The first school in Munroe Falls was built in 1816. In 1817 a wooden dam was built to provide power for both mills and the name of the village was changed to Florence.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Munroe Falls, Ohio, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.