But beyond the City of Cleveland, Cuyahoga’s county seat, 58 other municipalities, villages, and townships in the County beckon to the visitor, or perspective resident offering tree lined streets and homes, large and small, representing architectural styles ranging from Colonial to Tudor, and Queen Anne to Victorian. Quiet town squares co-exist with bustling commercial areas, and the landscape is dotted with hills and valleys, creeks and streams, falls and dams, parks and playgrounds, hiking trails and residential sidewalks. One can travel from Lakewood Park to Cain Park in Cleveland Heights or perhaps tranquil Chagrin Falls, and then back to Huntington Beach (Bay Village) or the County fairgrounds in Berea, in the space of one day. And a journey throughout the County would not be complete without a tour of the many memorable ethnic neighborhoods noted for their magnificent churches, delicious food and lively music, from Little Italy to Tremont, and from Collinwood to Broadway. African Americans have also played an important role in the development of the County with their historical contributions preserved in collections at the Western Reserve Historical Society and the African American Museum. But where one now sees a vital urban/suburban area, a blend of ethnic, religious, cultural and racial diversity, it is difficult to imagine its roots as a place of settlement for earlier civilizations dating to 2000 BCE. Excavations demonstrate that civilizations, like the Adena and Hopewell Mound Builders, flourished in what is now Cuyahoga County, circa 800 BCE to 1000 CE; and considerably later other Native American groups, including the Shawnees, Miamis, and Delawares, made this area their home. Cuyahoga County, in fact, is named for the Native American word meaning “crooked.”

The lands constituting Cuyahoga County were also subject to international interests as Spain, France and England, at various time prior to the Revolution, staked a claim to this territory. Spain traced its right to the area based on a grant from Pope Alexander VI in 1493, although never occupying her title to Northeastern Ohio. France, on the other hand, looked to the exploration, occupancy and settlement of men like Le Caron, Marquette, and La Salle in the seventeenth century as the source of her claims. Although France eventually ceded all claims to this territory to England in 1764 by the Peace of Paris. The English claim looked to the voyage of the Cabots in 1497; with Virginia and Connecticut relying on the charters granted by James I and Charles I respectively, to anchor their hold on the Ohio lands. After the Revolution England, in 1783, surrendered all title to the Thirteen Colonies and the lands to the west; and the following year Virginia ceded all of her claims to the U. S. government, with the exception of a small reservation in southern Ohio. Finally Connecticut yielded her claims in 1786, but reserved the territory, consisting of 2.5 million acres, extending 120 miles west from the Pennsylvania border, and eighty miles south from Lake Erie. A section of this Western Reserve would eventually become Cuyahoga County, but over twenty years passed before this became a reality.

The entire Ohio country was part of the Northwest Territory, established by the ordinance of 1787 and governed by General St. Clair. In 1788 the land east of the Cuyahoga river was designated as Washington County; with Marietta made the county seat of this territory that encompassed the lands from Lake Erie to the Ohio River. The land west of the Cuyahoga River, “extending to the headwaters of all streams flowing into Lake Michigan,” was named Wayne County in 1796, with Detroit as the county seat. More administrative changes were in store as Jefferson County was formed out of Washington County in 1797; and in 1800 the lands east and west of the Cuyahoga River were joined to constitute Trumbull County. Later Geauga County was created from the existing Trumbull County in 1806; and finally in 1808 Cuyahoga County was established, along with Ashtabula and Portage, carved from parent counties Trumbull and Geauga. The statute passed in 1808 proclaimed that all that part of the county of Geauga “which lies west of the ninth range of townships” would become a separate and distinct entity to be known by the name of Cuyahoga, and should be organized whenever the population should be sufficient to require it. Two years would pass before Cuyahoga County was formally separated from Geauga and declared to be independent, effective May 1, 1810. The first county officers, designated by the Ohio Constitution, as well as other legislation, were the commissioners, the sheriff and the coroner, all elected; while the treasurer, the judges of the common pleas court, the surveyor, the prosecutor, the recorder, and the clerk of courts, were appointed. The first meeting of the Cuyahoga County Commissioners was held in June of 1810 and one of the initial orders issued by Commissioners Jabez Wright and Nathaniel Doan was the payment of one dollar for wolf scalps for “the year ensuing.” The Common Pleas Court held its inaugural session in a newly completed frame store building belonging to Elias and Harvey Murray, situated on the south side of Superior Avenue between Public Square and Seneca St., now West 3rd. But within two years the County experienced the need to house its executive and judicial officers in more appropriate headquarters and a contract was let to construct a courthouse and jail on the northwest quadrant of the Square. The project began in 1812 and the building was completed in the Summer of 1813. The new two story structure was built of logs, costing $700.00. The lower story accommodated prisoners in two cells: one for criminals and one for debtors; while a living area was created for the sheriff. The courtroom was on the second floor; and here justice was administered for about fifteen years. By 1820 Cuyahoga County had a population of 6,328, noting an increase from an initial headcount of some 1,459 souls in 1810; but during the forty years that would precede the Civil War the settlement in this area would rise to 78,033 persons by 1860. It is impossible to chronicle the County’s history, or consider its growth, without examining the development of Cleveland, its county seat and source of its economic, social, and cultural heartbeat. The selection of Cleveland as the northern terminus of the Ohio and Erie Canal proved to be a boon to the city’s economy. Work on the canal, linking Cleveland to Portsmouth on the Ohio River, began in 1825, and the connection between Cleveland and Akron was established by 1827. The entire project was completed in 1832, and it came to replace the river route to New Orleans as the major means of transit for goods from the old Northwest destined for the East Coast. And Cleveland was not only the terminus of the Canal but a fledging lake port as well, a collection point for produce headed north and manufactured goods traveling south. Cleveland traded with the area north of Columbus while products south of the State’s capital were sent on to the Ohio River; and from 1827-1840 the Canal became the sole entrée to Lake Erie and to connections by canal to the east. And when the canal era eventually gave way to railroad construction and expansion, revolutionizing transportation in the U.S., Cleveland would became, by the end of the antebellum period, one of the nation’s predominant rail centers. And with economic development came an increase in population, and by 1836 both Cleveland, and Ohio City, on the Cuyahoga’s western bank, were named cities. By 1845 twelve thousand were living on both banks of the river, and Cuyahoga County, the beneficiary of its burgeoning towns, was declared the largest county in the Western Reserve in 1840. The nature of the area’s population changed as well, as immigrants were attracted to Lake Erie’s shores by the promise of economic opportunity, and it has been estimated that by 1840 over 25% of heads of households in Cleveland were foreign born.

The Civil War would leave an indelible mark on Cleveland, and Cuyahoga County, resulting in a spectacular loss of life but also leading to the transformation of the area’s identity. In response to President Lincoln’s call for 300,000 volunteers Cuyahoga County hoped to raise one thousand men, and officials believed that a bounty of fifty dollars, granted to each volunteer, in addition to the lump sum extended by the federal government, would serve as a special inducement to enlistment. The bounty was to be financed through state legislation authorizing the board of county commissioners to levy a property tax on all land in the county. Ultimately some 10,000 men served in the War from Cuyahoga County; 1,700 lost their lives and 2,000 returned disabled. But these heroic servicemen would not be forgotten by Cuyahoga County’s citizenry; and on July 4, 1894, the Soldiers and Sailors Monument on Cleveland’s Public Square was dedicated as a permanent memorial to those who fought in that cataclysmic conflict, and was the last Civil War monument built in Ohio. And the Soldier and Sailors Roll of Honor that documents the participation of Cuyahoga County in the great war reminds later generations of the very real sacrifice such patriotism entailed, as the volume chronicles alphabetically the names of those who served and recalls those distant battlefields, like Antietam, Chickasaw Bayou, Mississippi, Petersburg, Virginia, Pickett’s Mills, Georgia, or Shiloh, where the men were killed or wounded.

But despite the loss of life Cleveland, and surrounding Cuyahoga County, emerged a changed community. The wartime economy, demanding an increased production of supplies and materiel, spurred the growth of industry and led this area of northeast Ohio on the road to rapid industrialization. The population experienced a corresponding increase in size between 1860 and 1870 as the numbers multiplied over twofold from 43,417 to 92,829; with about 45% of Clevelanders, in 1870, described as foreign born. Immigration after 1870 was influenced by a desire to find work in this new industrial heartland, and the newcomers included increased numbers arriving from Eastern and Southern Europe. And the number of African Americans in Cleveland tripled from 1880- 1900, although representing a stable proportion of the City’s population at a little over one percent. Cleveland would be declared the fifteenth largest U.S. City in 1870, as its boundaries were expanded, through annexation, by swallowing up portions of other political jurisdictions like Newburgh, Brooklyn and East Cleveland Townships. Cleveland would become a national industrial center for large shipping, materials- handling, and shipbuilding industries, iron and steel production, and crude oil refineries. John D. Rockefeller, a transplanted Clevelander, arriving as a youth with his family in 1853, had become by 1880 one of the richest men in American with his Standard Oil Company controlling ninety percent of the nation’s refining capacity. And in 1879 Cleveland became the first city in the nation to have electric street lights, indebted to native Charles Brush for his invention of the arc lamp.

But rapid growth, increased industrialization, and significant economic development has its shadow side; and side by side with great wealth can also exist startling poverty. And in the decades following the Civil War institutions, frequently sponsored by religious based organizations, were offering care for the poor, the elderly and the orphaned. The increasingly complex problems that accompanied Cleveland’s, and the County’s, emergence as an industrialized urban area demanded a more comprehensive response from its local government. Thus the first real modifications in the basic structure of Cuyahoga County government did not take place until the late nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries, when the Board of County Commissioners began to respond to the problems posed by a growing urban population and an increasingly complex industrial society. New agencies and institutions in the fields of health, human services, and justice affairs, for example, were created. State legislation passed in 1902 made possible the Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court, representing the second such entity in the U.S. The provisions of the Ohio measure made it applicable to Cuyahoga County only, and the legislation was promoted and supported by local-interest groups who advocated the formation of
a separate court, and thus distinction in treatment for the juvenile offender. The Court would also become linked to a detention home for minors: an institution for delinquent, dependent, or neglected youth. The Juvenile Court also administered the Mother’s Pension Program created by the State of Ohio in 1913 to offer a stipend to women with children under the age of sixteen who lacked traditional means of support. And by 1913 the County Commissioners had new departments to supervise, including divisions of blind relief and soldiers’ and sailors burial. Through the activities of these two new agencies, the commissioners became involved in the business of providing assistance to the needy, a responsibility that would grow throughout the years. By 1913, as well the commissioners had assumed the duties of administering state aid to visually handicapped citizens through the operation of the blind relief division.

And Cuyahoga County would not remain oblivious to the shifting tides of the twentieth century and the major events that would impact its citizenry. For example the county commissioners created two departments to alleviate the hardships brought to county residents by the Depression. The Cuyahoga County Relief Administration served as the agency for the disposition of public-relief funds in the county; while the commissioners also received authorization to administer funds for housing relief in the county. A recreation division was also formed to see that funds were distributed to the best advantage on work relief projects related to recreation, including playground, music and theatrical projects. Such actions would prove to be more than a temporary commitment demanded by the conditions of the times; and following a succession of interim agencies the County would establish in 1947 a County Welfare Department; succeeded in later decades by a Department of Human Services. The County would also take the lead in various areas of health care, establishing a county nursing home in 1938 for the care of the elderly and chronically ill; and opening in 1953 the Highland View Hospital for the treatment of chronic illness. In later years Cuyahoga County would merge the Highland View chronic hospital with Metropolitan General Hospital in 1979, and in June of that year the Highland View chronic and rehabilitation hospital on the campus of Metro General was formally dedicated. In 1958 the County assumed control of Cleveland City Hospital, which along with Highland View Hospital became the nucleus of the Cuyahoga County Hospital System; it would become recognized as the nation’s first public hospital system.

The Second World War was another watershed event in twentieth century American history and Cuyahoga County rose to the occasion of serving its citizens in the wake of a world changed and forever transformed by that war. For example in 1946 the Commissioners took the first step toward the development of additional airport facilities, recognizing that with the development of airline travel as a major mode of private and commercial transportation, it was necessary for Cuyahoga County, as an important urban area, to supply adequate landing fields and air terminals. The Cuyahoga County Airport on Richmond Rd. was officially opened and dedicated in 1950. Another legacy of the postwar period was the county’s involvement in coordinating housing for returning veterans; and to further that goal the commissioners, in 1946, provided for the establishment of the Cuyahoga County Veterans Emergency Housing Program. The years after 1945 also saw the dawning of the Cold War and the county, again responding to perceived human needs, became actively involved in Civil Defense. The commissioners, in 1952, empowered their board president to enter into agreements with the various municipalities to coordinate civil defense activities. Cooperation between the County and its various municipalities would continue to characterize the latter part of the twentieth century in response to the demands of a high rate of urban development. For example in 1947 the commissioners agreed to cooperate with area municipalities in the creation and maintenance of a Regional Planning Commission to work toward rational planning for local growth; and in 1988 it was replaced by the Cuyahoga County Planning Commission. 1968 saw the establishment of the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency (NOACA), governed by the elected officials of five counties (Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake, Lorain, and Medina), for the purpose of solving shared regional problems.

It is clear that by 2002 the County has indeed come a long way from frontier outpost to modern urban community. Its population has soared from an initial settlement of 1,459 in 1810 to 1,393,845 according to the 2000 census. While Cleveland remains the dominant municipality at 477,459, nine other cities have populations over 25, 000; with Parma, the largest, at over 85,000, and Lakewood, Euclid and Cleveland Heights with each over 50,000 persons. The population is many and varied, with 34.1% declared minorities including African- American, Hispanic, Native American and Asian residents living in Cuyahoga County’s culturally rich, and racially, ethnically, and religiously diverse, communities.

The County’s workforce is active in a variety of areas, being employed in trade, manufacturing, transportation/utilities, construction, agriculture/forestry/fishing, government, mining, and finance; with the Services industry claiming the largest proportion of workers at 32.6%. Among the county’s major employers in 2000 were American Greetings, Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Clinic Health System, with the University Hospitals Health System ranked in the top fifteen. The county’s high standing in the medical field can be attested to by its 5,949 physicians (MDs and DOs) and 23 registered hospitals in the year 2000.

But the County’s history is yet being written. Cuyahoga County remains well aware of its rich past, rooted in Native American settlement, New England virtues and values, the rich traditions of ethnic communities, and the contributions of its heroic, generous, inventive, and talented citizens; this heritage preserved by the area’s large number of historical societies, archival facilities, and museums, but forever looking forward with hope, confidence, and enthusiasm toward the promise of the new millennium.

Stutz, Zelda and Filipic, Lois. Here’s Cuyahoga County. Cleveland: League of Women Voters of Cuyahoga County, 1994.

Works Progress Administration, Division of Women’s and Professional Projects, District Four. Guide to County Archives of Ohio. Volume XVIII. Cleveland: Cuyahoga County Archives Survey in Cooperation With Historical Records Survey, 1937.