Northeast Ohio in the context of Cleveland Clinic

The Cuyahoga River (see § Pronunciation) is a river located in Northeast Ohio that bisects the City of Cleveland and feeds into Lake Erie.

As Cleveland emerged as a major manufacturing center, the river became heavily affected by industrial pollution, so much so that it caught fire at least 14 times. When it did so on June 22, 1969, news coverage of the event helped to spur the American environmental movement. For many Americans, the Cuyahoga's burning helped connect urban decay with the environmental crisis at the time in many American cities. Since then, the river has been extensively cleaned up through the efforts of Cleveland's city government and the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (OEPA). In 2019, the American Rivers conservation association named the Cuyahoga "River of the Year" in honor of "50 years of environmental resurgence".

Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located along the southern shore of Lake Erie, it is situated across the Canadian border and approximately 60 mi (97 km) west of the Ohio–Pennsylvania state line. Cleveland is the most populous city on Lake Erie and second-most populous city in Ohio, with a population of 372,624 at the 2020 census. The Cleveland metropolitan area, with an estimated 2.17 million residents, is the 34th-largest metropolitan area in the United States.

Cleveland was founded in 1796 near the mouth of the Cuyahoga River as part of the Connecticut Western Reserve in modern-day Northeast Ohio by General Moses Cleaveland, after whom the city was named. The city's location on the river and the lake shore allowed it to grow into a major commercial and industrial metropolis by the late 19th century, attracting large numbers of immigrants and migrants. It was among the top 10 largest U.S. cities by population for much of the 20th century, a period that saw the development of the city's cultural institutions. By the 1960s, Cleveland's economy began to slow down as manufacturing declined and suburbanization occurred.

Hungarian Americans (Hungarian: amerikai magyarok, pronounced [ˈɒmɛrikɒji ˈmɒɟɒrok]) are Americans of Hungarian descent. The U.S. Census Bureau has estimated that there are approximately 1.396 million Americans of Hungarian descent as of 2018. The total number of people with ethnic Hungarian background is estimated to be around 4 million. The largest concentration is in the Greater Cleveland Metropolitan Area in Northeast Ohio. At one time, the presence of Hungarians within Cleveland proper was so great that the city was known as the "American Debrecen," with one of the highest concentrations of Hungarians in the world.

James Abram Garfield (November 19, 1831 – September 19, 1881) was the 20th president of the United States, serving from March 1881 until his death in September that year after being shot in July. A preacher, lawyer, and Civil War general, Garfield served nine terms in the United States House of Representatives and is the only sitting member of the House to be elected president. Before running for the presidency, he had been elected to the U.S. Senate by the Ohio General Assembly—a position he declined when he became president-elect.

Garfield was born into poverty in a log cabin and grew up in northeast Ohio. After graduating from Williams College in 1856, he studied law and became an attorney. He was a preacher in the Restoration Movement and president of the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute, affiliated with the Disciples. Garfield was elected as a Republican member of the Ohio State Senate in 1859, serving until 1861. He opposed Confederate secession, was a major general in the Union Army during the American Civil War, and fought in the battles of Middle Creek, Shiloh, and Chickamauga. He was elected to Congress in 1862 to represent Ohio's 19th district. Throughout his congressional service, he firmly supported the gold standard and gained a reputation as a skilled orator. He initially agreed with Radical Republican views on Reconstruction but later favored a Moderate Republican–aligned approach to civil rights enforcement for freedmen. Garfield's aptitude for mathematics extended to his own proof of the Pythagorean theorem, published in 1876, and his advocacy of using statistics to inform government policy.

Akron (/ˈækrən/) is a city in Summit County, Ohio, United States, and its county seat. It is the fifth-most populous city in Ohio, with a population of 190,469 at the 2020 census. The Akron metropolitan area has an estimated 702,000 residents. Akron is located on the western edge of the Glaciated Allegheny Plateau in Northeast Ohio, about 40 miles (64 km) south of downtown Cleveland.

First settled in 1810, the city was founded by Simon Perkins and Paul Williams in 1825 along the Little Cuyahoga River at the summit of the developing Ohio and Erie Canal.

Cuyahoga County (/ˌkaɪ.əˈhɒɡə/ KY-ə-HOG-ə or /ˌkaɪ.əˈhoʊɡə/ KY-ə-HOH-gə, see Cuyahoga River § Pronunciation) is a large urban county located in the northeastern part of the U.S. state of Ohio. The county seat and most populous city is Cleveland. As of the 2020 census, its population was 1,264,817, making it the second-most populous county in the state.

Cuyahoga County is situated on the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S.–Canada maritime border. The county is bisected by the Cuyahoga River, after which it was named. "Cuyahoga" is an Iroquoian word meaning "crooked river". It is the core county of the Cleveland, OH Metropolitan Statistical Area and Cleveland–Akron–Canton, OH Combined Statistical Area.

The Cleveland metropolitan area, or Greater Cleveland, is the metropolitan area surrounding the city of Cleveland, Ohio, United States. The six-county Cleveland, OH Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) as defined by the Office of Management and Budget consists of Cuyahoga, Ashtabula, Geauga, Lake, Lorain, and Medina counties in northeast Ohio, with a total population of 2,185,825. This makes it the 33rd-most populous metropolitan area in the United States and the third largest in Ohio.

The metro area is also part of the larger Cleveland-Akron-Canton, OH Combined Statistical Area, which, with over 3.7 million people, is the 17th most populous combined statistical area in the nation. Northeast Ohio refers to a larger region that includes Greater Cleveland, as well as metropolitan Akron, Canton, Youngstown, and surrounding rural areas. Greater Cleveland is part of what is known historically as the Connecticut Western Reserve.

The Connecticut Western Reserve was a portion of land claimed by the Colony of Connecticut and later by the state of Connecticut in what is now mostly the northeastern region of Ohio. Warren, Ohio was the Historic Capital in Trumbull County. The Reserve had been granted to the Colony under the terms of its charter by King Charles II.

Connecticut relinquished its claim to some of its western lands to the United States in 1786 following the American Revolutionary War and preceding the 1787 establishment of the Northwest Territory. Despite ceding sovereignty to the United States, Connecticut retained ownership of the eastern portion of its cession, south of Lake Erie. It sold much of this "Western Reserve" to a group of speculators who operated as the Connecticut Land Company; they sold it in portions for development by new settlers. The phrase Western Reserve is preserved in numerous institutional names in Ohio, such as Western Reserve Academy, Case Western Reserve University, and Western Reserve Hospital.