Olmsted Falls is a city in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, United States. The population was 8,582 at the 2020 census. A southwestern suburb of Cleveland, it is part of the Cleveland metropolitan area. The city’s main business district is located at the corners of Bagley and Columbia Roads and contains the Grand Pacific Junction, a historic district.
At a Glance
- County: Cuyahoga County
- State: Ohio
History of Olmsted Falls
After the Revolutionary War, the area that later became Olmsted Township, from which Olmsted Falls (as well as most of North Olmsted) was subsequently created, was part of the Western Reserve, a strip of northeastern Ohio land stretching 120 miles west from the Pennsylvania border, that was claimed by Connecticut. In 1795, Connecticut sold most of that land to the Connecticut Land Company, which then divided it into townships and sold it by auction. Several bidders won the right to purchase what then was known as Township 6, Range 15, with the largest share of almost half of the township going to Aaron Olmsted, a sea captain from East Hartford, Connecticut. However, it took years for the sales to be consummated. Olmsted died in 1806, so when the sale of his land was completed in 1807, it went to his widow and three sons, who sold parts of the land to settlers.
Although James Geer, who then lived in Columbia Township to the south, planted a crop of corn across the border in 1814, it was 1815 when he and his family moved into a small log house in Township 6, Range 15, to become the township’s first settlers in a section that later became part of Olmsted Falls. The township had several informal names, including Kingston, until 1823, when it was organized as a civil township called Lenox. However, because of confusion with another Lenox Township in Ashtabula County, one resident suggested renaming it Olmsted Township in honor of Aaron Olmsted. Olmsted’s son, Charles Hyde Olmsted, not only agreed to the request but was so pleased that he offered to send the community about 500 books from Connecticut by oxcart. Those books became known as the Oxcart Library.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Olmsted Falls, Ohio, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.