Northeastern Ohio was once part of the Western Reserve, a tract of land that Connecticut claimed under its colonial charter. In 1795 Connecticut sold most of the territory to the Connecticut Land Company, which sent out a surveying party headed by Moses Cleaveland. In 1796 Cleaveland laid out a public square with radiating streets on the site of the present-day city, east of the Cuyahoga River. The settlement was named for him and was incorporated as a village in 1814.
Completion of the Ohio and Erie Canal in 1832 transformed Cleveland from a frontier community to a commercial center at the head of an important waterway connecting the Ohio River and Lake Erie. With the completion a few years earlier of the Erie Canal, connecting the lake to the Eastern seaboard, Cleveland stood on the principal transportation route between the Midwest and the country's urban centers. Population more than tripled by 1836, when Cleveland was incorporated as a city. The first railroad arrived in 1851. Ohio City, a community on the west bank of the river, was annexed by Cleveland in 1854.
