North Royalton, Ohio: Vermont's Gift to Cuyahoga County
Near Cleveland, Ohio
North Royalton, on the high southern ridge of Cuyahoga County, traces its roots to eighteen eleven, when Melzer Clark and his wife became the first white settlers in what was then dense forest. A few years later, early residents named the township Royalton after the Vermont hometown of brothers David and Knight Sprague, who were among the original arrivals. Ohio had two Royaltons, however, so in the eighteen eighties the name was officially extended to North Royalton.
The community changed little for its first century, a rural plateau about twelve hundred feet above sea level. It finally became a village in nineteen twenty-seven and a city in nineteen sixty-one, growing into a south Cleveland suburb of about thirty thousand.
