Ashtabula
Ashtabula Information
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Ashtabula is a city in Ashtabula County, Ohio, and the center of the Ashtabula Metropolitan Statistical Area (as defined by the United States Census Bureau in 2003). A major location on the Underground Railroad in the middle 19th century, the city today is a major coal port on Lake Erie at the mouth of the Ashtabula River northeast of Cleveland. The name Ashtabula means “river of many fish” in the Iroquois language. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 20,962.
Trivially, the city was mentioned by Bob Dylan in his 1975 song “You’re Going to Make Me Lonesome When You Go” in the line I’ll look for you in old Honolulu, San Francisco, Ashtabula. The poet Carl Sandburg wrote a poem titled “Crossing Ohio when Poppies Bloom in Ashtabula.” There is also a fictional novel called “The King from Ashtabula” by Vern Sneider, published in 1960.
Ashtabula hosts an annual Blessing of the Fleet Celebration, usually in late May or early June. As part of the celebration, a procession and prayer service is held at Ashtabula Harbor.
The Ashtabula Harbor is a mysterious beauty; it contains The Dry Dock and Brenner’s, which are popular drinking establishments for alienated intellectuals and artists, unemployed steelworkers, coal shippers, fishermen out on their luck, and grateful people just having another day in a place most would never dare enter for fear of getting lost and forgotten forever. But we like it most of the time.
Ashtabula was founded in 1803, later incorporated in 1891. The city contains several former stops on the Underground Railroad which was used to convey African-American slaves to freedom in Canada in the years before the American Civil War. Among the stops is Hubbard House, one of the handful of termination points. Ex-slaves would reside in a basement of the house adjacent to the lake and then leave on the next safe boat to Canada, gaining their freedom once they arrived in Ontario. Its harbor has been a large ore and coal port since the end of the 19th century and continues to be to some extent with a long coal ramp draping across the horizon in the current harbor and the ore shipments unloaded from lakers that is sent down to the steel mills of Pennsylvania.
Many newcomers to Ashtabula in the late 19th century and early 20th century were immigrants from Finland, Sweden, and Italy. Ethnic rivalries among these groups were once a major influence on daily life in Ashtabula. A substantial percentage of the current residents are descended from those immigrants. The population in the City of Ashtabula grew steadily until 1970, since when it has been declining just as steadily.
The 1900s saw great changes in Ashtabula. Its access to Lake Erie and nearly 30 miles of shoreline helped position Ashtabula as a major shipping and commercial center.
During the 1950s, the area experienced growth with its expanding chemical industry and increasing harbor activity, making Ashtabula one of the most important port cities of the Great Lakes. Interesting historical industries in the area included a Rockwell International plant on Route 20 on the western side of Ashtabula that manufactured brakes for the Space Shuttle program as well as the extrusion of depleted and enriched uranium at the Reactive Metals Extrusion plant on East 21st street, prompting FEMA to, as recently as 1990 (the year the plant ceased operations), place Ashtabula on its list of expected primary nuclear targets for the Soviet Union.
Ashtabula Harbor hosts an annual Blessing of the Fleet community festival. The origin of the Blessing of the Fleet can be traced to Portuguese and Irish fisherman and tugmen who settled in Ashtabula. Sometime in the 1930′s, the Blessing of the Fleet was a small, almost private affair in early April conducted by a few tugmen, their parish priest, and an acolyte. By 1950, it had become a public ceremony under the auspices of Mother of Sorrows parish. In 1974, the Blessing of the Fleet became a community affair involving all of Ashtabula’s religious and harbor community. Today the Blessing is held annually, usually in late May. The Coast Guard Station and the Harbor Museum and other sites have been established to preserve Ashtabula’s maritime heritage.