The Greatest Highway in the World / Historical, Industrial and Descriptive Information of the Towns, Cities and Country Passed Through Between New York and Chicago Via the New York Central Lines. Based on the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

by New York Central Railroad Company

(Train 3 passes 11:55; No. 41, 4:35; No. 25,3:30; No. 19, 8:20. Eastbound: No. 6 passes 7:20; No. 26, 8:35; No. 16, 11:30; No. 22, 2:56.)

A trading post was established on the present site of Cleveland as early as 1785 and ten years later Capt. Moses Cleaveland, leader of a small band of pioneers and agent of the Connecticut Land Co., surveyed the ground and planted the nucleus of the present thriving city—now fifth in size in the country. Capt. Cleaveland, in travelling from Connecticut into the Northwest, followed closely the present route of the New York Central Lines, crossing N.Y. State to Buffalo and then from Buffalo along the shore of Lake Erie.

Moses Cleaveland

Moses Cleaveland (1754-1806) was born at Canterbury, Conn., and graduated from Yale. After serving in the U.S. Army, where he attained the rank of captain, he practiced law and entered the Connecticut legislature. Later, he organized the Connecticut Land Co., which in 1795 purchased a large portion of the Western Reserve.

At that time the southern shore of Lake Erie was part of the famous Western Reserve territory, consisting of 3,250,000 acres of land, certain parts of which Connecticut ceded to her citizens as compensation for their losses from "fire and damage" at the hands of the British during the Revolutionary War. These lands were sometimes known as "Fire Lands."

The Western Reserve was a part of the territory immediately west of the Pennsylvania line, and extending westward therefrom 120 M. Connecticut held and "reserved" this territory to herself in 1780, when she ceded to the general government all her rights and claims to the other lands in the West. Later Conn. ceded the Reserve itself, but not before she had sold much of it to the Conn. Land Co., and the latter had begun the sale and disposition of all the lands so acquired, east of the Cuyahoga River. Until after 1815 no lands west of that river were open to entrance or survey, and settlers ventured there at their own risk. This was the Indian Boundary Line, established in 1795, and beyond it the aborigines had exclusive right of occupancy.

It was for the purpose of surveying and developing these lands that Capt. Cleaveland undertook his expeditions into the Western Reserve. The first of these expeditions (1795) was composed of 50 men, women and children who arrived at Ft. Independence (now Conneaut) on Lake Erie, July 4, 1796. Pushing on further, they arrived at the present site of Cleveland, and in a few days the first log cabin was erected at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River.

City of Cleveland from Reservoir Walk (1873)