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 . (18go), 18,471; (190o), 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 Loth 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 .