Founding
county seat of Mahoning County, Ohio, United States
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Youngstown is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio. It lies along the Mahoning River in Northeast Ohio, predominantly within Mahoning County, of which it is the county seat. The population was 60,068 at the 2020 census (estimated at 58,832 in 2025), making Youngstown the eleventh-most populous city in Ohio. Its metropolitan area, known as the Mahoning Valley, had an estimated 426,086 residents in 2024.
Youngstown was named after pioneer John Young, who founded the city in 1797 within the Connecticut Western Reserve and established the first sawmill and gristmill along the Mahoning River. It was an early industrial city of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and became known as a center of steel production. However, Youngstown did not economically diversify like larger industrial cities, and with the movement of steelmaking jobs offshore as the industry contracted in the 1970s, the city came to exemplify the Rust Belt.
Revitalization efforts in the 21st century include the Covelli Centre and Youngstown Foundation Amphitheatre, while other notable city institutions include the Butler Institute of American Art, Mill Creek Park, Stambaugh Auditorium, and Youngstown State University. Youngstown is about 5 miles (8.0 km) west of the Ohio–Pennsylvania border and midway between Cleveland (60 miles (97 km) northwest) and Pittsburgh (60 miles (97 km) southeast).
Youngstown was named for New York native John Young, who surveyed the area in 1796 and settled there soon afterward. On February 9, 1797, Young purchased the township of 15,560 acres (6,300 ha) from the Western Reserve Land Company for $16,085. The 1797 establishment of Youngstown was officially recorded on August 19, 1802.
The area that includes present-day Youngstown was part of the Connecticut Western Reserve, a section of the Northwest Territory that Connecticut initially did not cede to the federal government. Upon cession, Connecticut retained the title to the land in the Western Reserve, which it sold to the Connecticut Land Company for $1,200,000. While many of the area's early settlers came from Connecticut, Youngstown attracted many Scots-Irish settlers from neighboring Pennsylvania. The first European Americans to settle permanently in the area were Pittsburgh native James Hillman and wife Catherine Dougherty. By 1798, Youngstown was the home of several families who were concentrated near where Mill Creek meets the Mahoning River. Boardman Township was founded in 1798 by Elijah Boardman, a member of the Connecticut Land Company. Also founded in 1798 was Austintown by John McCollum who was a settler from New Jersey.
As the Western Reserve's population grew, the need for administrative districts became apparent. In 1800, territorial governor Arthur St. Clair established Trumbull County (named in honor of Connecticut Governor Jonathan Trumbull), and designated the smaller settlement of Warren as its administrative center, or county seat. In 1813, Trumbull County was divided into townships, with Youngstown Township comprising much of what became Mahoning County. The village of Youngstown was incorporated in 1848, and in 1867 Youngstown was chartered as a city. It became the county seat in 1876, when the administrative center of Mahoning County was moved from neighboring Canfield. Youngstown has remained Mahoning County's county seat since then.
The discovery of coal by the community in the early 19th century paved the way for the Youngstown area's inclusion on the network of the famed Erie Canal. The Pennsylvania and Ohio Canal Company was organized in 1835, and the canal was completed in 1840. Local industrialist David Tod, who became Ohio governor during the Civil War, persuaded Lake Erie steamboat owners that coal mined in the Mahoning Valley could fuel their vessels if canal transportation were available between Youngstown and Cleveland. The railroad's arrival in 1856 smoothed the path for further economic growth.
Youngstown's industrial development changed the face of the Mahoning Valley. The community's burgeoning coal industry drew hundreds of Welsh, German, and Irish immigrants. With the establishment of steel mills in the late 19th century, Youngstown became a popular destination for Eastern European, Italian, and Greek immigrants.
In the early 20th century, the community saw an influx of immigrants from non-European countries including what is modern-day Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, and Syria. By the 1920s, this dramatic demographic shift produced a nativist backlash, and the Mahoning Valley became a center of Ku Klux Klan activity. The situation reached a climax in 1924, when street clashes between Klan members and Italian and Irish Americans in neighboring Niles led Ohio Governor A. Victor Donahey to declare martial law. By 1928, the Klan was in steep decline; and three years later, the organization sold its Canfield, Ohio, meeting area, Kountry Klub Field. Despite the prevalence of Irish Americans in Youngstown, their presence was not always evident. When radio personality Pete Gabriel (who was Greek) came to Youngstown, he found out that there was no St. Patrick's Day parade there at the time, so he started one.
The growth of industry attracted people from within the United States and from Latin America. By the late 19th century, African Americans were well represented in Youngstown, and the first local congregation of the African Methodist Episcopal Church was established in 1871. In the 1880s, local attorney William R. Stewart was the second African American elected to the Ohio House of Representatives. A large influx of African Americans in the early 20th century owed much to developments in the industrial sector. During the national Steel Strike of 1919, local industrialists recruited thousands of workers from the southern United States, many of whom were Black. This move inflamed racist sentiment among local Whites, and for decades, African-American steelworkers experienced discrimination in the workplace. Migration from the South rose dramatically in the 1940s, when the mechanization of southern agriculture brought an end to the sharecropping system, leading onetime farm laborers to seek industrial jobs.
Youngstown's local iron ore deposits were exhausted by the early 20th century. Since the city is landlocked (the Mahoning River is not navigable), ore from Michigan and Minnesota had to arrive by rail from Cleveland and other Great Lakes port cities where large bulk carriers were unloaded. This put Youngstown at a competitive disadvantage to the iron and steel producers in Cleveland, Buffalo, Chicago and Detroit—all on Great Lake shores. Compared to these four cities, Youngstown had a higher cost of transporting raw materials to the mills, according to a Harvard Business Review report published in January 1933. Higher transportation costs are one reason why Youngstown mills began their decline slightly earlier than manufacturing in other cities.
The city had a healthy position within the midwestern United States in terms of transportation connections. An airport built in 1930 hosted Capital and United Airlines flights through the region and to New York prior to the jet age of the latter 1950s. It was on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad mainline to Chicago with the Capital Limited. Likewise, Youngstown was on the Erie Railroad mainline, on its Chicago–Jersey City circuit, with trains such as the Atlantic Express/Pacific Express and the Lake Cities. The city was on the New York Central's Pittsburgh–Buffalo circuit and the Pennsylvania Railroad's Pittsburgh–Cleveland circuit.
The city's population became more diverse after the end of World War II, when a seemingly robust steel industry attracted thousands of workers. In the 1950s, the Latino population grew significantly and by the 1970s, St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church and the First Spanish Baptist Church of Ohio were among the largest religious institutions for Spanish-speaking residents in the Youngstown metropolitan area. In 1951, city planners projected that Youngstown would grow to 200,000 to 250,000 in population due to continuously strong demand for domestic steel in western Europe, Japan, and South Korea, and so 12,000 acres on the city's East Side were annexed and extended utilities in expectation of future housing projects, in addition to aggressive re-zoning for expanded commercial spaces throughout the city.
A strike action occurred on September 6, 1967, when only 9 of the 50 scheduled patrolmen reported for duty at the Youngstown Police Department. Instead, the patrolmen, eventually numbering around 300, along with approximately 300 city-employed firefighters, were attending "continuous professional meetings." They vowed to continue doing so until their demand for an immediate across-the-board pay raise of $1,200 was met. By September 9, when a county judge ordered them back to work, citizens were reportedly disturbed by the risks posed by police and fire services operating at roughly 30% of normal staffing levels. The most serious incident during the walkout was a car fire. When the judge ended the work stoppage, he also ordered the pay raise. Apart from a fruitless six-day "sick call" of police in Detroit in June 1967, Youngstown's action was the first major police strike since the Boston police strike in 1919. The Sheboygan Press of Sheboygan, Wisconsin, observed, "So we have seen the first successful strike by policemen and firemen. It is a precedent over which there should be little rejoicing."
The industrial economy that drew various groups to the area collapsed in the late 1970s, culminating with the September 19, 1977, closure of the Youngstown Sheet and Tube Campbell works after financial downturn due to changes in the steel manufacturing process and international competition. In 1979–1980, U.S. Steel pulled out of the Youngstown area, and in the mid-1980s, Republic Steel also filed for bankruptcy. Attempts to revive the local steel industry proved unsuccessful. Shortly after the closure of most of Youngstown Sheet and Tube's area operations, local religious leaders, steelworkers, and activists such as Staughton Lynd participated in a grassroots effort to purchase and refurbish the company's abandoned plant in neighboring Campbell, Ohio. In response to subsequent challenges, the city has taken well-publicized steps to diversify economically, while building on some traditional strengths.
Downtown Youngstown has seen modest levels of new construction. In the 2000s, additions included the Nathaniel R. Jones Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse in 2002, named for native Youngstownian Nathaniel R. Jones and designed by Robert A. M. Stern Architects, the Mahoning County Children's Services Center and George Voinovich Government Center in 2004, and both the Covelli Centre and Ohio Seventh District Court of Appeals in 2006. The Covelli Centre was funded primarily through a $26 million federal grant secured in 2000 by then-Congressman James Traficant and is located on the site of a former steel mill downtown. The arena's main tenants are the Youngstown Phantoms junior hockey team.
In 2004, construction began on a 60-home upscale development called Arlington Heights, and a grant from the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development allowed for the demolition of Westlake Terrace, a sprawling and dilapidated public housing project. Today, the site features a blend of senior housing, rental townhouses and for-sale single-family homes. Low real-estate prices and the efforts of the Youngstown Central Area Improvement Corporation have contributed to the purchase of several long-abandoned downtown buildings (many by outside investors) and their restoration and conversion into specialty shops, restaurants, and eventually condominiums. In addition, a $250 million New Urbanist revitalization of the Smoky Hollow neighborhood developed about 400 new residential units, university student housing, retail space, and a park.
In 2005, Federal Street, a major downtown thoroughfare that was closed off to create a pedestrian-oriented plaza, reopened to traffic. The downtown area has seen the razing of structurally unsound buildings and the expansion or restoration of others. New construction has dovetailed with efforts to cultivate business growth. One of the area's more successful business ventures in recent years has been the Youngstown Business Incubator, which fosters the growth of fledgling technology-based companies.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Youngstown, Ohio”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.