Cleveland Heights is a city in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, United States. The population was 45,312 at the 2020 census. Founded in 1901, it is one of Cleveland’s historic streetcar suburbs.
At a Glance
- County: Cuyahoga County
- State: Ohio
History of Cleveland Heights
The area that is now the city of Cleveland Heights lies atop the Portage Escarpment. Until the late 1800s, the area remained largely timber and farmland, with a few orchards, quarries, and vineyards. The first road through the city, Mayfield Road, was not built until 1828. The initial road took 2 years to build. Some of the land was divided into farms, but it also had quarries in the 19th century. One of the early quarries was established by Duncan McFarland who mined bluestone. This led to the settlement that grew up around the quarry for the workers to live in to be referred to as Bluestone. There is still a road of this name in that area.
In 1873, business magnate John D. Rockefeller acquired about 700 acres (280 ha) in what is now the cities of East Cleveland and Cleveland Heights, with a water cure hotel, which he converted to a mansion for his family in East Cleveland. Eventually, some of the land, straddling both suburbs, was turned into residential developments, and, in 1938, the family donated land which is now Forest Hill Park.
The development of electric streetcars made the development of suburbs far outside Cleveland’s city limits practical for the first time in the 1890s. About 1890, a town center began forming at what is now the intersection of Mayfield and Superior roads. Cleveland Heights was first organized as a hamlet in 1901. The population of about 1,500 grew quickly, and in 1903 it incorporated as a village. It had a population of 15,396 in 1920 and was incorporated as a city on August 9, 1921. Between 1920 and 1930, Cleveland Heights’ population more than tripled. By 1960 it had a population of 61,813.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Cleveland Heights, Ohio, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.