At the census , it had a population of 60,, making it the eleventh-most populous city in Ohio. Youngstown is a midwestern city located at the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. The city was named for John Young , an early settler from Whitestown, New York , who established the community's first sawmill and gristmill. It was an early industrial city of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and became known as a center of steel production.
With the movement of jobs offshore as the steel industry in the United States fell into decline in the s, the city became exemplary of the Rust Belt. Youngstown has seen declines in population of nearly 65 percent within its city limits and about 15 percent in the metro area since Downtown Youngstown has seen various revitalization efforts in the 21st century, including the Covelli Centre and Youngstown Foundation Amphitheatre.
Youngstown's first new downtown hotel since βthe DoubleTree by Hilton βopened in in the historic Stambaugh Building, adapted for this use. Youngstown was named for New York native John Young , who surveyed the area in and settled there soon afterward.
The area that includes present-day Youngstown was part of the Connecticut Western Reserve , a section of the Northwest Territory that Connecticut initially did not cede to the federal government. As the Western Reserve's population grew, the need for administrative districts became apparent. In , territorial governor Arthur St. Clair established Trumbull County named in honor of Connecticut Governor Jonathan Trumbull , and designated the smaller settlement of Warren as its administrative center, or county seat.
It became the county seat in , when the administrative center of Mahoning County was moved from neighboring Canfield. The discovery of coal by the community in the early 19th century paved the way for the Youngstown area's inclusion on the network of the famed Erie Canal. The Pennsylvania and Ohio Canal Company was organized in , and the canal was completed in The railroad's arrival in smoothed the path for further economic growth.
