Akron historical timeline

Akron was founded because of a canal and made rich because of a bicycle tyre.

The canal

Simon Perkins laid out the town in 1825 at the summit lock of the Ohio and Erie Canal, where boats had to climb the watershed. The canal brought grain, and Akron milled it; Ferdinand Schumacher’s oat mills here became Quaker Oats.

Rubber

B. F. Goodrich was persuaded to move his rubber works here in 1870. The pneumatic tyre and then the motor car turned that into an industry: Goodyear was founded in 1898, Firestone in 1900, and by the 1920s Akron was the fastest-growing city in the United States, its population rising from 69,000 in 1910 to 208,000 in 1920. Workers came from Appalachia in such numbers that the city was sometimes called the capital of West Virginia.

Labour and airships

A landmark sit-down strike at Goodyear in 1936 helped establish industrial unionism. Goodyear also built airships, and the enormous airdock of 1929 was constructed to house them.

Alcoholics Anonymous

Founded in Akron in 1935 when a local surgeon met a visiting New York stockbroker; the house where it happened is preserved.

Quaker Oats and the mills

Before rubber, Akron milled. Ferdinand Schumacher, a German immigrant, began producing rolled oats here in the 1850s and persuaded the American public to eat them, and the company he built merged into what became Quaker Oats. The silos of one of the mills survive downtown, converted into a hotel with circular rooms.

Decline and after

Tyre production ended in the city by the 1980s. Polymer research, healthcare and the university now carry the economy.