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History

The City of Conneaut is located in the northeastern most corner of Ohio, bordering the state of Pennsylvania to the east and has 27 square miles within its corporate city limits, making it the 15th-largest city in Ohio by total land area.

Settled on an old Native American trail, later used by early westbound pioneers of the Western Reserve founded by Moses Cleaveland.

The name Conneaut comes from the Seneca language and has a disputed meaning, the most prominent being “River of Many Fish”. A Mississauga village was once located at or near Conneaut, c. 1747. Conneaut was originally named Salem, and the parts surrounding it were later named "Lakeville" from 1944 to 1964, when a merger combined them into what is now the current city proper. 

Conneaut has a mixture of urban areas and rural farmland. The city has over seven miles of shoreline along Lake Erie, with beaches, parks, boating facilities and a healthy summer tourist trade. The city's historic business district and its harbor business district were once connected by a trolley system that also connected the city to Cleveland, Oh. and Erie, Pa. 

A few of the famous businesses that once anchored the downtown and port areas were the Cummins Can Company and the Astatic Corporation, a world renowned manufacturer of microphones that are still in use today. The Pittsburgh and Conneaut Dock company, (now Canadian National) was the birth place of the Hulett ore unloaders used widely on the Great Lakes in the 1900’s. The Port of Conneaut continues to be the northern loading point for train cars bearing iron ore for Pittsburgh, Pa.  area steel mills making it an international shipping port. Conneaut is also the current home to the Lake Erie Correctional Institution, a privately operated prison governed by the State of Ohio. 

The 1950’s brought major transportation routes to serve Conneaut via Interstate 90, which bisects the city, along with three major railroads connecting the city to Chicago and New York and points south. These railroads are Norfolk & Southern, CSX (formerly known as the Nickel Plate Railroad) and the Bessemer and Lake Erie. U.S. Route 20 also bisects the city and Ohio State Route 7 has its northern terminus in Conneaut from Youngstown, Ohio.