US Map / Cities / Cleveland

Cleveland Map

Cleveland stands where the crooked Cuyahoga River empties into Lake Erie, and that river valley still organizes the city's industry, bridges and neighborhoods.

Where is Cleveland?

Cleveland occupies the northeastern corner of Ohio, on the southern shore of Lake Erie roughly 60 miles west of the Pennsylvania line. The lakefront runs east-west here, so the city has water to its north and open country in every other direction. The state capital, Columbus, is about 140 miles southwest; Pittsburgh is roughly 135 miles southeast across the Appalachian Plateau; and Detroit lies about 170 miles west around the lake. Buffalo sits some 190 miles northeast along the same shoreline.

Cleveland at a glance

Cleveland in Ohio

Cleveland is the seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in Ohio, and its suburbs fill nearly all of it — see the Ohio county map for how the state's 88 counties are laid out. Ohio is unusual in having three large cities of comparable weight in three different corners: Columbus in the center, Cincinnati in the southwest on the Ohio River, and Cleveland in the northeast on the lake, with Toledo at the western end of Lake Erie. None of them dominates the state the way Chicago dominates Illinois, and the Ohio state page shows how evenly the population is spread.

Lake Erie, the Cuyahoga and the canal

The Cuyahoga's last few miles are a tight sequence of meanders through a steep-sided valley — the Flats — which is where the docks, mills and lift bridges are. The river was so polluted that it caught fire several times, most famously in 1969, and that fire became one of the arguments for the Clean Water Act. Cleveland's original reason for being was the Ohio and Erie Canal, opened in the 1820s and 30s, which connected Great Lakes shipping here to the Ohio River at Portsmouth and made the city the transfer point between the two systems. Iron ore from Lake Superior still arrives by freighter. East of the city the land rises onto the Appalachian Plateau, and cold air crossing the lake dumps lake-effect snow on that rise — the Snow Belt suburbs get several times the snowfall of the lakeshore neighborhoods a few miles west.

Cities near Cleveland

Around the eastern Great Lakes are Detroit, Toledo and Buffalo; south and east are Columbus, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh. The East North Central division page sets the whole group side by side.