Welcome to the Cleveland Lakefront! Founded in 1796 by General Moss Cleveland, the city was a port town, due in large part to its proximity to the mouth of the Cuyahoga River, and quickly grew into a major manufacturing center.

The economy itself now relies on financial services, maufacturing, biomedicals, healthcare, and higher education. It features the Cleveland Clinic, which is not only the largest private employer in the state of Ohio, but also one of America's best hospitals.

Environmentally, Cleveland has had a mixed reputation, but is definitely improving. Due to Cleveland being a manufacturing town, the Cuyahoga River had been massively affected by industrial pollution. As a result, the river itself caught fire a total of 13 times since 1868. However, the city has gotten far better, and is now recognized as an environmental success story. It was the fire of 1969 which spurred this, making the city, under Mayor Carl B. Stokes, pass the Clean Water Act in 1972.

Cleveland is also home to a large music scene, spanning multiple genres. It has seen performances from several notable jazz musicians, including Louis Armstrong and Cab Calloway, was the home of hip hop group Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, is the home of the Cleveland Orchestra, widely considered one of the finest orchestras in the entire world, and the best in the country. Cleveland is most known, however, for its connections to Rock and Roll. Cleveland is in fact the home of the I. M. Pei-designed Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which is itself located on the Lake Erie Waterfront (all information courtesy of Wikipedia.com, image courtesy of Jason Pratt from Pittsburgh, PA (FishSpeaker) / CC BY).