Founding & Western Reserve Origins
Solon, Ohio occupies a place of singular importance in the history of the Connecticut Western Reserve — the strip of northeastern Ohio land retained by Connecticut following the American Revolution. The city's formal founding traces to 1820, when Ezekiel Bull and Ashbel Robbins established the settlement that would become its civic core, though meaningful European habitation had begun years earlier through the activities of pioneering families who arrived ahead of the formal town structure.
The territory that became Solon was among the last areas of Cuyahoga County to be formally organized, owing partly to the challenging terrain at its center — a swampy, heavily forested lowland that initially discouraged settlement. The county itself was not created until 1808, amid slow urban growth in the western reaches of the Reserve, while Geauga County to the east had already drawn established communities around its lakes and river corridors.
"Early accounts refer to Solon as 'Miland' — a small settlement carved from impossibly swampy ground that would nonetheless become, two centuries later, the most acclaimed community in Ohio."
The region drew settlers along pathways like Aurora Road, a trail established during the War of 1812, which connected nascent communities across the Eastern Cuyahoga corridor. Solon's position along these routes, and its rich agricultural soils once the lowland areas were cleared and drained, made it an increasingly attractive destination for families pushing west from the established Geauga County settlements.
The Founding of Solon Center
The decisive act that established Solon Center as the community's hub came from an unexpected source. In 1830 or 1831, Freeman McClintock — son of James McClintock Sr., one of the region's largest landholders — cleared a small lot at the swampy center of the settlement and constructed the first log house. This act, recalled decades later by L.S. Bull in his 1858 history, was transformative: it drew neighbors to an area previously dismissed as uninhabitable, and provided the nucleus around which Solon's civic life could organize.
Freeman's log house was subsequently replaced by a tavern — a natural gathering point for a frontier community — and later by a formal Solon Town Hall. When the Town Hall burned in the late 1890s, it was immediately rebuilt, completed by 1899. That rebuilt structure still stands on the original lot Freeman McClintock cleared, now home to the Solon Center for the Arts since 1990 — a living link to the city's earliest physical history.
The Griffithsburg Rivalry
Solon's emergence as the region's dominant settlement was not assured. A competing community called Griffithsburg — a mill and quarry town in what is now the South Chagrin Reservation — had attracted significant early settlers and briefly held claim to being the area's primary hub. In an era when post office designations determined settlement fates, controlling the local post office was a matter of community survival.
Freeman McClintock's success in securing the post office for Solon, relocating it away from Griffithsburg, proved decisive. With the post office came commerce, communication, and credibility — and Griffithsburg gradually faded while Solon flourished. The ruins of Griffithsburg's ambitions are today absorbed into the natural landscape of South Chagrin Reservation, while Solon grew to become the most acclaimed city in the region.