Moreland Hills

• James A. Garfield1831-1881Twentieth president, born in a Cuyahoga County log cabin, who ran the first succ...

How Moreland Hills began

Settlement in what became Moreland Hills began in 1815 near where State Route 87 crosses the Chagrin River, within Orange Township, organized in 1820 and known through the 1800s for steam sawmills, cheese factories, and farms. James A. Garfield, the 20th US president, was born there on November 19, 1831, while the ground was still part of Orange Township; that same year, on October 25-26, Joseph Smith, Sidney Rigdon, and Oliver Cowdery held the Latter-day Saint church's Orange Conference at the home of Serenes Burnett nearby. Orange Township split into five municipalities -- Moreland Hills, Hunting Valley, Orange Village, Pepper Pike, and Woodmere -- in the early 1900s, with Moreland Hills incorporating in 1929 over the township's southeast quadrant and adopting a village charter in 1972.

Settled 1815, near the crossing of State Route 87 and the Chagrin River, incorporated village, 1929, from the southeast quadrant of Orange Township; village charter adopted 1972.

Where the name comes from

No source we reviewed explains the origin of the name Moreland Hills.

Before the town

No source we reviewed identifies a specific, named Native American village, mound, or treaty site within present Moreland Hills; the land was part of Orange Township, organized in 1820 on ground ceded to the United States by the 1795 Treaty of Greenville.

Nations recorded here: Lenape (Delaware), Wyandot.

Timeline

1. 1815 — Settlement begins near the point where State Route 87 crosses the Chagrin River.
2. 1820 — Orange Township, which will include the future Moreland Hills, organizes.
3. 1831-11-19 — James A. Garfield, later the 20th US president, is born in a log cabin on ground that is still part of Orange Township and later becomes Moreland Hills.
4. 1831-10-25 — Joseph Smith, Sidney Rigdon, and Oliver Cowdery, the three leading figures of the early Latter-day Saint church, hold the two-day Orange Conference at the home of Serenes Burnett, at the southeast corner of today's Ohio Route 87 and Chagrin River Road.
5. 1897 — The Cleveland-Chagrin Falls Railway begins serving the area as a commuter line, spurring residential development.
6. early 1900s — Orange Township divides into five municipalities: Moreland Hills, Hunting Valley, Orange Village, Pepper Pike, and Woodmere.
7. 1929 — Moreland Hills incorporates as a village, covering the southeast quadrant of the original Orange Township.
8. 1940s — Hiram House, the country's second settlement house after Chicago's Hull House and now a state historical landmark, relocates to Harvard Road and State Route 91.
9. 1972 — Moreland Hills adopts a village charter establishing a mayor-council government.

Stories

A president's birth and a prophet's conference, the same year

In 1831, the farmland that would become Moreland Hills hosted two moments that later history would treat very differently. On November 19, a farm couple's fifth child, James Abram Garfield, was born in a log cabin there -- a birth that drew no particular notice at the time, since nothing yet marked the infant as a future president. Less than a month earlier, on October 25 and 26, the ground a short distance away hosted people whose fame was already established: Joseph Smith, Sidney Rigdon, and Oliver Cowdery, the three central figures of the young Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, gathered at the home of Serenes Burnett for what is remembered in church history as the Orange Conference. Both events happened on what was, at the time, simply Orange Township land -- neither a president's birthplace nor a church conference site yet, just a corner of farm country that history would return to mark twice over.

Photographs

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · en.wikipedia.org

The Five Mile Crib, a small structure about 5 miles out in Lake Erie north of Cleveland's Edgewater Park The water here

• Cleveland Public Water System57% of residentsLake Erie
• Chagrin Falls Village36% of residentsLake Erie
• Paw Paw Lake6% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)

Public schools (2)

Museums, historical societies, gardens and zoos (1)

Police stations (1)

Superfund sites (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (4)

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Financial Audit, 2025, released 2026-07-09
• OP&F Examination, 2024, released 2026-05-19
• Financial Audit, 2024, released 2025-09-02

Source: Ohio EPA eDocument portal (edocpub.epa.ohio.gov), indexed 2026-10-14. Facilities are placed on the map from Ohio EPA's own map layers, EPA's Facility Registry, coordinates written in the filings, or a geocoded street address. A permit filed under a private person's name (most are household septic systems) is counted but never named, placed or linked; licenses for individual workers and open-burning notices are left out entirely.

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