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Local city information for Struthers, OH

Struthers is a city in Mahoning County, Ohio, United States. The population was 12,036 at the 2000 census. Struthers is served by a branch of the Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County. It is part of the Youngstown-Warren-Boardman, OH-PA Metropolitan Statistical Area.

John Struthers, from Washington County, Pennsylvania, purchased of Poland Township land in 1798. This land would later be known as the present day city of Struthers. The community's early history centers on Yellow Creek which was the site for the first iron blast furnace built west of Pittsburgh. The furnace was built in 1803 by Daniel Eaton and is mentioned in the first line of the 1995 Bruce Springsteen song "Youngstown" .

Several furnaces were built along the creek during the first decade of the 1800s and all ceased to exist after The War of 1812 began. The land on the Yellow Creek would lay dormant for more than 50 years until Thomas Struthers, son of John Struthers, bought back the land his father had lost following the War of 1812 in 1865. Thomas Struthers laid out the village that year and gave it his family's name. An excerpt from a 1948 Cradle of Steel Homecoming program illustrates what happened next.

''In 1869 Struthers again became an iron producing community with the construction of the Anna Furnace by the Struthers. Iron Company. In 1880 there was added the sheet mill plant of the Summer's Brothers Co., and in 1888 the plant of the J. A. and D. P. Cooper Gear Company.
With all these activities Struthers still remained a village of less than 1,000 inhabitants, after 100 years had elapsed since John. Struthers built his first cabin and erected the sawmill and grist mill on Yellow Creek. In 1899 Struthers was brought into closer communication with Youngstown and the upper Mahoning Valley by the completion of an interurban electric line.
In 1902 the neighboring village of East Youngstown (now Campbell) was started. This new community was started shortly after the incorporation of The Youngstown Iron Sheet and Tube Company (known as The Youngstown Sheet and Tube Co., since 1905).

With the steel industry booming in the early part of the 1900s, immigrants from throughout Europe flooded into Struthers. A village in 1902 when it was officially incorporated, Struthers quickly became a city in 1920.
The steel industry allowed the city to flourish until 1977 when several area plants closed their doors for good. The city padded the loss of thousands of jobs by using its industrial infrastructure to lure non-steel making jobs, but population losses have continued throughout the start of the new century.

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