T
he sounds of Sandusky epitomize the many reasons why
this small Ohio town is a huge Lake Erie tourism hub:
The long blasts of a horn on the Jet Express ferry; the caw
of gulls scavenging for fish; the courthouse clock ringing
on the hour; the cheerful clink of wine glasses; the periodic
shrieks of people hurtling toward the earth at up to 93 mph.
Like many other Great Lakes ports, Sandusky has lured
generations of vacationers with beautiful vistas and abundant
opportunities for water recreation. What sets Sandusky apart,
however, is its location on well-protected Sandusky Bay,
its genuine hometown atmosphere and the Cedar Point
amusement park — a crown jewel attraction famously known
as “The Roller Coaster Capital of the World.” Not only does
the park offer 18 different twisting, turning, swinging, swaying,
plunging, passenger-flipping, adrenalin-spiking coasters, Cedar
Point also covers the entire slender peninsula that juts into the
mouth of Sandusky Bay. The park offers the singular experience
of taking your boat to an amusement park and staying overnight
at amenity-laden Cedar Point Marina.Glaciers, grids and a
gateway to freed�m
Sandusky sits halfway between Cleveland
and Toledo, the two big cities that
anchor, respectively, the east and west
sides of Ohio’s extensive Lake Erie
shoreline. The town’s name comes
from the Wyandot word “saundustee,"
which translates to “water." Sandusky’s
fortuitous position on a natural harbor
— tucked between Ohio’s mainland and
the long, hefty arm of its Marblehead
Peninsula — was a gift from the glaciers that carved out the
shallow and prolific Lake Erie, where more fish are caught
every year than in the four other Great Lakes combined.
While its geography was nature’s handiwork, Sandusky’s
history originated with transplants from New England who
settled the “Fire Lands,” a half-million acres in northern Ohio
that Connecticut claimed and used to compensate citizens of
towns burned by the British during the American Revolution.
In an 1805 treaty, the Wyandot and other tribes ceded the
Fire Lands to the fledgling United States; however, the area
wasn’t safe for settlement until the War of 1812 finally ended
conflicts with the British and their Native American allies.
Connecticut-born land developer James Kilbourne first
suggested the founding of a town on Sandusky Bay, and in
1818 Kilbourne hired his son to survey and plat the future
city of Sandusky. Since Hector Kilbourne and his enterprising
father were both Masons, he incorporated the organization’s
symbolic square and compass into the town’s rectangular grid.
His unique 200-year-old design still accounts for the diagonal
streets that frequently confuse first-time Sandusky visitors.
Slowly but steadily, Sandusky grew into a bustling
commercial port; and after the construction of Ohio’s first
chartered railroad line in the 1830s, it developed into animportant transportation center. Thanks to that railroad,
one of the town’s earliest tourists was Charles Dickens,
who, in 1842, steamed into town on a train pulled by the
Sandusky, the first locomotive west of the Alleghenies.
In “American Notes,” Dickens described his stay in a
“comfortable little hotel on the brink of Lake Erie” before
boarding a steamboat bound for Buffalo.
Although Dickens declared Sandusky “uninteresting,”
another famous author had an entirely different perspective.
Harriet Beecher Stowe was keenly aware that Sandusky was
a major terminal on the clandestine Underground Railroad,
whose hapless passengers were runaway slaves in search of
freedom. When she wrote “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” Stowe made
Sandusky the gateway to freedom for the central character
Eliza, who eluded slave catchers by disguising herself and her
child before getting on a steamer going to Canada.
The more conventional exports that departed Sandusky’s
docks — fish, lumber and grain — reflected the bounty
of the nation’s burgeoning Heartland. After the Civil
War, new industries emerged, including ice harvested
from the frozen Bay and wine
made from grapes grown on the
nearby Bass Islands. As train tracks
multiplied along the waterfront,
manufacturing thrived. Over the MAY 2018 | LAKELANDBOATING.COMCOURTHOUSE PHOTO BY RONA PROUDFOOT/WIKI; ALL OTHER PHOTOS THIS SPREAD COURTESY OF LAKE ERIE SHORES & ISLANDSJet Express ferry dockErie County CourthousePOC_Sandusky_MAY18.indd 58 3/28/18 12:57 PM