Cuyahoga County History 

In January 1810, the government of Ohio established Cuyahoga County from part of the Connecticut Western Reserve. Residents took the county’s name from the Indian word “Cuyahoga” or “crooked river.” Moses Cleaveland brought the first white settlers to the area in 1796. With completion of the Ohio and Erie Canal and its location on Lake Erie, Cleveland prospered as a trade center, and the city also became a major industrial site in the late 1800s.

Summary of County Demographics

Cuyahoga County is located in the northern portion of Ohio and covers 458 square miles. Its northern border is Lake Erie. The county has experienced a small decline in population, losing 1.3 percent of its residents between 1990 and 2000. See Table 1 for population characteristics for Cuyahoga County and Cleveland, the largest city in the county. As of 2000, Cuyahoga County still ranked as Ohio’s most heavily populated county with nearly 1.4 million residents, averaging almost 3,044 residents per square mile. Cleveland is the county seat and is also the county’s largest city, with a population of 478,403 people in 2000. The population decline has principally resulted from the loss of industrial jobs in recent years. The county is ethnically diverse, as people from all around the world came to Cleveland during the late 1800s and the early 1900s looking for work in the city’s industries. The population of the City of Cleveland exhibits a number of risk factors in greater severity than its surrounding county, including births to teenage mothers, low birthweight births, births without adequate prenatal care, and child maltreatment rate. Economically, the City shows a concentration of challenges, such as having 31% of adults with no high school degree, 51% of units being renter occupied, and greater rates of poverty among individuals and families with children. In recent years, Cleveland, has ranked first or second in regard to poverty rates for cities with populations greater than 250,000.