Sandusky, Ohio: Firelands, Freedom, and the Roller Coaster Capital

The name Sandusky derives from a Wyandot word meaning cold water, and this city on the southern shore of Lake Erie has been shaped by water in almost every chapter of its history.

The land here was awarded as compensation to Connecticut residents whose homes had been burned by British raiders during the Revolutionary War. The state of Connecticut ceded its western land claims to the federal government but retained this strip along Lake Erie as the Firelands, and the first permanent settlers arrived in eighteen sixteen. The city grew into a substantial port, and by the middle of the nineteenth century it had acquired a role that its residents kept mostly quiet: Sandusky was one of the final stops on the Underground Railroad, code-named Hope. The lake was only forty miles wide here. A short boat ride north reached Canadian soil, where slavery had been illegal since eighteen thirty-three. Thousands of freedom seekers passed through Sandusky's houses and churches and onto vessels bound for freedom.

During the Civil War, the city added another layer to its story. On Johnson's Island in Sandusky Bay, the Union Army established a prisoner-of-war camp for Confederate officers in eighteen sixty-two. More than fifteen thousand men passed through its gates before it closed in eighteen sixty-five.

But when most Americans hear the word Sandusky, they think of Cedar Point. The peninsula jutting north into Lake Erie became a picnic ground and beer garden in eighteen seventy and grew into something incomprehensible in scale: a park with more roller coasters than any other on earth, eighteen at last count, including several that have at various points held world records for height, speed, and the sheer amount of time you spend upside down. The Roller Coaster Capital of the World sits in the Firelands, at the end of the Underground Railroad, on ground that has seen more of American history than most visitors stop to consider.