The Bellaire Bridge (now abandoned and closed) was filmed in the 1991 motion picture The Silence of the Lambs.

Mound builders occupied numerous areas along the Ohio River and built complex earthworks.

The Mingo, Shawnee and Delaware were historic tribes who inhabited the area at the time of European encounter and settlement.

Unhappy that the United States had ignored their grievances in the 1789 Treaty of Fort Harmar, the Indians tried to push out the settlers over the next several years.

The first documented European visitors to the Ohio River Valley and this area were French trappers and priests in the early and mid-1700s.

They were impressed with the river's heavily wooded and hilly shores, and with the abundance of fish and wildlife.

The young George Washington had explored and surveyed lands in the Ohio River Valley before the Revolutionary War.

After the war, he supported plans to have the federal government make land grants to veterans as payment for their services, in lieu of cash.

John Rodefer and Jacob Davis purchased a shared majority of land for a village, which they realized in 1834.

The first big boost for growth came with the construction of the Central Ohio Railway in 1853, later absorbed by the Baltimore and Ohio, and the Stone Viaduct Bridge (opened in 1871) that carried it to Wheeling, West Virginia.

A skilled workforce was located within the region, since glass had been made across the river in Wheeling since the 1820s.

[8] During the Bituminous Coal Miners' Strike of 1894, the National Guard was called up to protect the region's coal mines, and on June 13, there was a violent clash between strikers and national guard troops just west of town.

It specialized in the mass production of attractive and affordable pressed-glass tableware, using continuous-feed melting tanks.

Bellaire's glassmaking era finally ended when the "Big I" closed its door in 1984.

Imperial was one of the largest and most diverse of the companies that made up the American handmade glass industry.