Biohazard Cleanup Near Sunset Point Kelleys Island, OH

Kelleys Island is a village in Erie County that occupies the entire island of the same name in Lake Erie — at 4.41 square miles, it is the largest American island in the lake.

The island carried several earlier names — Sandusky Island under the British, then Island Number 6 and Cunningham Island — and it served as a military rendezvous post during the War of 1812.

Brothers Datus and Irad Kelley began buying the island in 1833 at $1.50 an acre, eventually owning nearly all of it, and renamed it Kelleys Island in 1840.

The Kelley Island Lime & Transport Company, which grew out of the island's quarries, was once the largest producer of limestone and lime products in the world, operating from 1896 into the early 1960s.

Grapes were first grown on Kelleys Island in 1842, and by the early 20th century the island was producing about 500,000 gallons of wine a year.

The 2020 census counted just 256 year-round residents on Kelleys Island; back in 2010 its 312 residents lived in only 175 households while the island held 859 housing units, most of them seasonal vacation homes.

The island's Glacial Grooves, carved into the limestone by Ice Age glaciers, run about 400 feet long, 35 feet wide, and up to 10 feet deep, and are among the largest accessible glacial grooves in the world.

Inscription Rock, on the island's south shore, is a flat limestone boulder about 32 by 21 feet covered in Native American petroglyphs dated to roughly 1643.

The entire island was designated a National Register of Historic Places district in 1988.

Kelleys Island is one of only 17 islands in the Great Lakes that has a year-round population, and most visitors arrive by ferry from Marblehead or Sandusky or by private boat to its marinas.