Akron

Akron is an industrial city in northeastern Ohio, south of Cleveland along the Little Cuyahoga River. The terrain sits across a series of rolling glacial hills at the drainage divide between Lake Erie and the Ohio River system. It serves as the administrative seat of Summit County and acts as a center for polymer science.

Paul Williams and Simon Perkins founded the settlement in 1825 on the crest of the Ohio and Erie Canal route. The canal opened through the township two years later, using a flight of locks to carry freight barges across the watershed ridge. Akron became a village in the 1830s and a city in the 1860s. Cereal milling and clay sewer pipe production fueled early growth, including the founding of the German Mills American Oatmeal Company in the 1850s. Benjamin Franklin Goodrich, a physician turned manufacturer, moved a rubber factory to the city in 1870, initiating the manufacture of fire hoses and carriage tires.

Automotive expansion established tire manufacturing as the primary economic base in the early 20th century. Frank Seiberling organized the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company in the late 1890s, followed by Harvey Firestone establishing the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company at the turn of the century. While factory assembly shifted elsewhere in the late 20th century, corporate administration and chemical research remained. FirstEnergy maintains its corporate headquarters in the central business district. Regional medical systems provide extensive employment through hospital networks operated by Summa Health and Akron Children's Hospital.

The University of Akron, which began as Buchtel College, operates research laboratories dedicated to polymer engineering and advanced materials. West of downtown, Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens preserves a Tudor Revival manor built in the 1910s for the Seiberling family. The Akron Art Museum displays 20th-century and contemporary painting, sculpture, and photography in a modern glass pavilion. South of the central district, the Derby Downs track has hosted the annual All-American Soap Box Derby world championship gravity races since the 1930s.