Blood & Biohazard Cleanup Near Parkside Peninsula, OH

Peninsula is a village in northern Summit County, Ohio, that sits entirely surrounded by Cuyahoga Valley National Park, making it a small private village in the middle of one of America's most-visited national parks.

Peninsula takes its name from the peninsula-like bend the Cuyahoga River makes as it curves around the village.

Settlement in Peninsula began in 1818, and Hermon Bronson platted the village in 1837; it incorporated in 1859, with Hiram Volney Bronson as its first mayor.

Peninsula boomed with the opening of the Ohio and Erie Canal in 1827, growing into a bustling canal port with boatyards, mills, stone quarries, five hotels, and 14 taverns serving canal workers and travelers.

The arrival of the Valley Railway in 1880 added a second transportation boom to Peninsula's canal-era prosperity.

More than 20 sites in Peninsula are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and the Peninsula Village Historic District preserves the village's well-kept 19th-century canal-town streetscape.

Because many of Peninsula's early settlers came from New England in the Connecticut Western Reserve, the village is known for its Greek Revival architecture, including the 1824 Bronson House built from local sandstone.

The Bronson Memorial Church was built in 1835 as the Bethel Church, in part to curb the rowdy behavior of canal boatmen, and was redesigned in the Gothic Revival style in 1889.

Peninsula is a tiny village of just 536 people at the 2020 census, with roughly 240 households.

Public schooling for Peninsula children is provided by the Woodridge Local School District, and the Boston Mills and Brandywine ski resorts - among the few skiing spots in Ohio - sit just north of the village.