Canton
Discover Canton
A concise introduction to Canton, its geography, history and culture.
Introduction
Canton, in north-east Ohio, has two claims and they are both national. The first is football: the National Football League was founded here in 1920, at a meeting in a car showroom on the corner of Cleveland Avenue, which is why the Pro Football Hall of Fame is in a city of seventy thousand people rather than a major market. It inducts each year’s class over a week in early August, with a game and a parade, and the surrounding Hall of Fame Village has been built out around it.
The second is presidential. William McKinley lived here, ran his 1896 campaign from his own front porch — several hundred thousand people came to Canton to hear him rather than the other way round — and is buried under a domed memorial on a hill above the city. The adjoining museum and the First Ladies National Historic Site downtown cover the period in more detail than anywhere else.
The rest of the town is a compact and partly restored industrial centre, with an arts district that opens its galleries on the first Friday of the month, a classic car museum, and the Canton Symphony. Amish country around Walnut Creek and Millersburg is forty minutes west, and Cuyahoga Valley national park about an hour north.