Timberlake

How Timberlake began

Timberlake is a small Lake Erie village in western Lake County, incorporated in 1947 from the lakeshore of old Willoughby Township, one of the string of separations that also produced Waite Hill (1928), Lakeline (1929) and Eastlake (1948). Its streets were named from Longfellow's poem The Song of Hiawatha, and the village keeps a hall, park and a small private beach reached by a stairway down the lake bluff. At about a fifth of a square mile it is one of the smallest incorporated places in the county.

Incorporated 1947.

Where the name comes from

No source consulted explains the name Timberlake itself. The village's own site records that its street names come from Longfellow's 1855 poem The Song of Hiawatha (the village's retelling names Wenonah, Nokomis, Mudjekeewis, Minnehaha, Waban, Shawondassee, Keewaydin, Owaissa and Nepahwin).

Before the town

No Native American village, trail or site inside Timberlake is recorded in the sources consulted. The street names taken from Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha are literary, taken from a nineteenth-century poem, and do not record any local Native presence. Neighboring Eastlake's history reports an Erie village near Lake Shore Boulevard and Reeves Road, without archaeological citation.

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. 1815 — Chagrin Township, which then included the lakeshore where Timberlake now lies, is formed, stretching from Lake Erie south to Mayfield Township.
4. 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.
5. 1897 — The Cleveland, Painesville and Eastern shoreline interurban streetcar line begins bringing visitors to this part of the lakeshore.
6. 1947 — Timberlake incorporates as a village, part of the same wave of separations from the old Willoughby Township that produced Waite Hill (1928), Lakeline (1929) and, the following year, Eastlake (1948).
7. 1950 — The earliest available census figure records Timberlake's population at 236.
8. 1954 — What remains of Willoughby Township incorporates as the Village of Willoughby Hills in April.
9. 1960 — Population grows to 670, an increase of 183.9 percent over the 1950 figure.
10. 2022 (75th anniversary) — Timberlake marks its 75th anniversary of incorporation with a fireworks display.

Stories

Streets named from Hiawatha

Timberlake's own website explains that the village's streets were named from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha, and retells the part of the poem the names come from: Wenonah, daughter of Nokomis, who dies after the birth of her son Hiawatha; Nokomis, who raises him; Mudjekeewis the West Wind, his father, and his brothers Waban the East Wind, Shawondassee the South Wind and Keewaydin the Northwest Wind; Minnehaha, 'Laughing Water', whom Hiawatha marries; the bluebird Owaissa; and Nepahwin, the spirit of sleep. The site calls this 'the story of the Timberlake legend'. It does not say who chose the names or when. The village hall at 11 East Shore Boulevard, with a park, bocce courts and a stairway down the bluff to a small beach kept for residents, is the village's common ground.

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · willoughbyhills-oh.gov · villageoftimberlake.com · villageoftimberlake.com · villageoftimberlake.com · 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

Police stations (1)

Who holds office

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

Money issues on the ballot since 2022: 4 of 4 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.
• Agreed Upon Procedures, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-07-22

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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