Cleveland

a lake port of northern Ohio. It is situated on a level beach, on both sides of the Cuyahoga River, 115 feet above the surface of Lake Erie. The mouth of the river has been dredged and affords a capacious harbor, having several miles of wharfage. Its area is enlarged and protected by an immense outlying breakwater or dyke of masonry, constructed by the general government at an expense of $8,000,000. The valley of the river is filled with warehouses, depots, coal sheds, and grimy factories. The two parts of the city are united by two enormous overhead viaducts or elevated roadways that pass from bluff to bluff across the valley.

The city is the metropolis of the Western Reserve. It was named for General Moses Cleaveland, its founder. It was intended originally to be the capital of a state to be called New Connecticut. It was laid out 1796. The first library was started in 1811; the first bank in 1816; the first newspaper in 1818; in 1824 the first steamer was launched from its shipyard; in 1828 the bar was cut away from the entrance to the river; in 1851 the first railroad was built.

The growth of the city is due to its manufactures and commerce. Iron ores from Minnesota and Pennsylvania, and coal from Ohio, make Cleveland one of the great iron manufacturing cities of the Union. It leads in nails and wire, and is second in hardware. The most important shipyards on the Great Lakes are here. The foundry and machine shop products are rated at nearly $50,000,000 a year. The bulk of the bolts, rivets, nuts, and washers sold in a western hardware store are made here. Next to iron work, come meat-packing, clothing, beer, petroleum and paint.

The Ohio Canal terminates at Cleveland and brings in a large amount of coal and agricultural products. Counting iron and copper, Cleveland is the greatest ore market in the world. Western grain goes largely to Buffalo. Western ore is marketed chiefly at Cleveland. It is a great market for petroleum and lumber. About fifty lines of lake steamers make the city their headquarters.

Cleveland has been noted from the first for the intelligence and taste of its inhabitants. An excellent system of public elementary and high schools is reinforced by the Western Reserve University and the Case School of Applied Science. A public library contains 200,000 volumes. The various college libraries have as many more. Population in 1900, 381,768; in 1909, 500,000.

See Garfield; Western Reserve; Erie