Blood & Biohazard Cleanup Near Bears Den Youngstown, OH

Youngstown was founded in 1797 by surveyor John Young, who bought the 15,560-acre township from the Western Reserve Land Company for $16,085 and built the area's first sawmill and gristmill along the Mahoning River.

Youngstown was incorporated as a village in 1848 and chartered as a city in 1867, and in 1876 it became the county seat of Mahoning County, taking the seat from neighboring Canfield.

Youngstown grew into one of America's great steel centers, and Youngstown Sheet and Tube — founded in 1900 — became one of the nation's largest steelmakers and the Mahoning Valley's biggest employer.

Youngstown's population peaked at 170,002 in the 1930 census, when the city ranked among the industrial giants of the Midwest.

On September 19, 1977 — a day still remembered locally as 'Black Monday' — Youngstown Sheet and Tube abruptly closed its Campbell Works and furloughed about 5,000 workers, a blow widely seen as the beginning of the American steel industry's collapse.

Youngstown's population has fallen nearly 65 percent since 1960, down to 60,068 at the 2020 census, which still makes it the eleventh-most populous city in Ohio.

Youngstown has roughly 25,000 households, and only about 56% of its homes are owner-occupied, with a median owner-occupied home value of about $63,300 according to Census Bureau QuickFacts.

Mill Creek Park, the centerpiece of the Mill Creek MetroParks system, preserves more than 4,400 acres of parkland in and around Youngstown, including Lanterman's Mill, a working gristmill built in 1845-1846 beside a waterfall on Mill Creek.

Fellows Riverside Gardens, a free public botanical garden at the northern end of Mill Creek Park, features rose gardens and overlooks of the Mahoning River valley.

The Butler Institute of American Art, dedicated in 1919, was the first museum in the United States built specifically to house American art, and its collection now exceeds 20,000 works.