Lakeline

How Lakeline began

Lakeline is one of the smallest of the string of small Lake Erie shoreline villages that split off from the old Willoughby Township in the early twentieth century, incorporating in 1929 with most of its homes concentrated along tree-lined Lake Shore Boulevard and the streets adjacent to it. Like its similarly-sized neighbors Waite Hill, Timberlake and Eastlake, its founding fits the broader pattern of township fragmentation recorded in Willoughby Hills' own local history, as small lakeshore communities chose incorporation over remaining part of a large township.

Incorporated 1929.

Where the name comes from

No source consulted explains the name Lakeline; the village sits on the Lake Erie shore, but no source states that this is why it was so named.

Before the town

No Native American village, trail or site inside Lakeline is recorded in the sources consulted. The neighboring city of Eastlake's own history reports an Erie village near Lake Shore Boulevard and Reeves Road more than three hundred years ago, without archaeological citation. The land passed to the Connecticut Land Company under the 1795 Treaty of Greenville.

Timeline

1. 1796 — Surveyor Charles Parker, working for the Connecticut Land Company, builds a house and several huts at the mouth of the Chagrin River, recorded as the first house in the township and probably in the county.
2. 1798 — David Abbott of Brookfield, Massachusetts, a Yale-educated lawyer who as Trumbull County sheriff presided at the Western Reserve's first election in 1800, becomes the first permanent settler of the township first titled Charlton and then Chagrin.
3. 1800 — David Abbott, as sheriff of Trumbull County, presides at the first election held on the Western Reserve; forty-two votes are cast to choose a representative to the Territorial legislature, and Gen. Edward Paine receives thirty-eight.
4. 1809 — Noah Worden comes to the township from New York and locates where his sons Joseph and James later lived.
5. 1815-04-03 — Chagrin Township holds its first election for officers, with Elisha Graham, George Beach and Henry Davis as trustees and Christopher Colson clerk.
6. 1816 — A Methodist class is formed under Rev. Ira Eddy, probably the first church in the township, and Richard Woolsey begins the tannery that was still running in 1878.
7. 1818 — Thomas Card opens the first store in the township, in a small frame house in what is now Willoughby village.
8. 1834 — Chagrin Township is renamed Willoughby in honor of Professor Willoughby of Herkimer County, New York; it belongs to Cuyahoga County until Lake County is formed in 1840.
9. 1850 — A cheese factory of the Lake County Milk Company begins operating west of Willoughby village on the Cleveland road.
10. 1853 — The village of Willoughby is incorporated under the act of May 3, 1853.
11. 1880s — Wealthy Clevelanders begin building summer homes along this stretch of the lakeshore, according to neighboring Eastlake's history.
12. 1897 — The Cleveland, Painesville and Eastern shoreline interurban streetcar line begins bringing visitors to the lakeshore.
13. 1929 — Lakeline incorporates as a village, part of the same wave of separations from the old Willoughby Township that also produced Waite Hill (1928) and, later, Timberlake (1947) and Eastlake (1948).
14. 1930 — The earliest available census figure records Lakeline's population at 75.
15. 1954 — What remains of Willoughby Township incorporates as the Village of Willoughby Hills in April, ending the township from which Lakeline separated.
16. 1960 — Lakeline's population peaks in the historical record at 269.
17. 2020 — The census records 216 residents in Lakeline, down from 269 in 1960 and up from 165 in 2000.

Stories

The first election on the Reserve, held in Lakeline's township

Lakeline was cut from Willoughby Township, which began as number nine of the first range of the Connecticut Land Company's Western Reserve and was called Charlton, then Chagrin, until 1834. Its first settler, David Abbott, a Yale-educated lawyer from Brookfield, Massachusetts, came in 1798, and before that Charles Parker, a surveyor for the company, had built a house and several huts at the mouth of the Chagrin River in 1796, the first house in the township and in the county. In 1800 Abbott, then sheriff of Trumbull County, which at the time embraced the entire Reserve, presided at the first election held there, to choose a representative to the Territorial legislature. Forty-two votes were cast; Gen. Edward Paine received thirty-eight and was declared elected. Abbott later sat in the Ohio constitutional convention of 1802 and was a presidential elector in 1812. Lakeline itself, on the lakeshore edge of the old township, incorporated as a village in 1929.

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · wwlcchamber.com · willoughbyhills-oh.gov · archive.org · eastlakeohio.com

Lake Erie, drawn through a 60-inch intake pipe extending about 3,100 feet offshore from the Aquarius plant in Willoughby The water here

• Lake County West Water Subdistrict100% of residentsLake Erie

Who holds office

Roster as of 2026-01-23: county board of elections.

Money issues on the ballot since 2022: 2 of 2 passed.

Ballot issues

Elections for office

Winners in bold. Results from the county board of elections' official canvass unless marked.

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Basic Audit, 2024 to 2025, released 2026-04-21
• Basic Audit, 2022 to 2023, released 2024-12-12

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