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.
To keep the commissary supplied was no easy problem in the new settlement. Sometimes they ate boiled rattlesnake in default of anything better. On one occasion, while the little band of settlers was assembled in prayer in one of the log cabins, someone espied a bear swimming across the Cuyahoga River. The coming of the bear was looked upon as providential, and the congregation suspended the prayer-meeting, killed the bear, and then returned to their devotions.
Capt. Cleaveland's plans for his new settlement were ambitious, and he built a number of substantial roads through the forests, usually following the old Indian trails, now the right of way of the New York Central and other lines. With the opening of the Ohio Canal to the Ohio River (1832), Cleveland became the natural outlet on Lake Erie for Ohio's extensive agricultural and mineral products. The discovery and commercial exploitation (beginning about 1840) of large deposits of iron ore in the Lake Superior region placed Cleveland in a strategic position between these vast ore fields and the coal and oil resources of Ohio, Pa., and W. Va., and it is from this time that the city's great commercial importance really dates.