Berea (/bəˈriːə/ bə-REE-ə[6]) is a city in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, United States.

Berea is home to Baldwin Wallace University, as well as the training facility for the Cleveland Browns and the Cuyahoga County Fairgrounds.

Berea fell within Connecticut's Western Reserve and was surveyed and divided into townships and ranges by Gideon Granger, who served as Postmaster General under President Thomas Jefferson.

Abram Hickox, a Revolutionary War veteran, bought the first plot in what is today Middleburg Heights and in 1808 traveled west from Connecticut to his new purchase.

His plot of land was sold to his nephew, Jared Hickox, who came to the area with his wife Sarah and family in 1809.

They followed an ancient Indian highway down through the forest from Cleveland and then, at what is now the corner of Bagley and Pearl roads, began to hack their way directly west.

Love came to the rescue, however; and the area's spirits were lifted by its first marriage, that of Jared's daughter Amy Hickox to a recent arrival, Abijah Bagley.

In 1827, educator John Baldwin moved to Middeburg Township where he joined forces with James Gilruth and Henry Olcott Sheldon, Methodist circuit preachers who wanted to form an ideal Christian community.

Members of the Community vowed to avoid all luxuries and temptations that would prevent them from achieving the Methodist ideal of "sanctification," or perfect love of God.

Financial disputes led to the dissolution of the Community and the departure of James Gilruth within a year.

[7] The failure of these two Utopian experiments left John Baldwin and Henry Sheldon in deep debt.

However, Baldwin had since 1838 been making grindstones from sandstone in the creek bed of the Rocky River.

[10] In 1845, Baldwin convinced the North Ohio Conference of the Methodist Church to charter a new school: a new Utopian venture of sorts, because the new school, the Baldwin Institute, would provide education to all, regardless of sex, race, religious creed, or ability to pay.

In 1891, the school broke ground for a new campus at Front Street and Bagley Road.

The quarries also provided sandstone that was extensively used as a construction material, in the form of Berea dimension stone.

[22] The east branch of the Rocky River runs through Berea, providing its water supply for most of the year.

Since 2023, Berea has been included in Ohio's 7th congressional district, represented by Republican Max Miller.

[B] The first collegiate Bach festival in America was founded in 1932 by music educator Albert Riemenschneider and his wife Selma.

Since the inception of the festival, Baldwin Wallace students perform Bach works with faculty, as well as with international and local professionals.