SANDUSKY, a city, port of entry, and the county-seat of Erie county, Ohio, U.S.A., on Sandusky Bay, an arm of Lake Erie, about 56 m. W. by S. of Cleveland. Pop. (1890), 18,471; (1900), 19,664, of whom 4002 were foreign-born and 295 were negroes; (1910 U.S. census) 19,989. Sandusky is served by the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern, the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & Saint Louis, the Pennsylvania, the Baltimore & Ohio, and the Lake Erie & Western railways, by several interurban electric lines, and by steamboats to the principal ports on the Great Lakes. Among the public buildings are the United States Government Building and the Court House. The city has a Carnegie library (1897), and is the seat of the Lake Laboratory (biological) of the Ohio State University, and of the Ohio Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Home (26 buildings).
At the entrance to Sandusky Bay is Cedar Point, with a beach for bathing. At the mouth of the harbour is Johnson’s Island, where many Confederate prisoners were confined during the Civil War. A few miles farther N. are several fishing resorts, among them Lakeside and Put-in-Bay; at the latter the United States government maintains a fish hatchery, and out of the bay Oliver Hazard Perry and his fleet sailed on the morning of the 10th of September 1813 for the Battle of Lake Erie. Sandusky has a good harbour, which has been greatly improved by the United States government; and its trade in coal, lumber, stone, cement, fish, fruit, ice, wine and beer is extensive; in 1908 the value of its exports, chiefly to Canada, was $580,191 and the value of its imports $57,762. The value of its factory products increased from $2,833,506 in 1900 to $4,878,563 in 1905, or 72.2 %.
English traders were at Sandusky as early as 1749, and by 1763 a fort had been erected; but on the 16th of May of that year, during the Pontiac rising, the Wyandot Indians burned the fort. The first permanent settlement was made in 1817, and in 1845 Sandusky was chartered as a city.