Canal Fulton is a city in western Stark County, Ohio, United States, along the Tuscarawas River.

Canal Fulton traces its history to three villages that developed along the Tuscarawas River.

[6] The land that would become Canal Fulton was part of broader territories shared between several Native American tribes, including Wyandot, Lenape (Delaware), Shawnee, Odawa (Ottawa), Ojibwe (Chippewa), Potawatomi, Miami, Eel River, Wea, Kickapoo, Piankishaw, Munsee, and Kaskaskia.

The United States pressed these nations to cede territory to the west of the Tuscarawas in 1785 and to the east in 1805, paving the way for settlers like Rowland to claim divisions.

The Treaty of Fort McIntosh in 1785 claimed land west of the Ohio to the Tuscarawas from Wyandot, Delaware, Shawnee, Ottawa, Chippewa, Potawatomi, Miami, Eel River, Wea, Kickapoo, Piankishaw, and Kaskaskia Native Americans.

With the Treaty of Fort Industry in July 4, 1805, Wyandot, Ottawa, Chippewa, Munsee, Delaware, Shawnee, and Potawatomi land east of the Tuscarawas was claimed by the United States and made open to white settlers.

Settlers encountered Native Americans attempting to defend their families and territory, confrontations with wild beasts, and difficulty in transportation.

Settlers arrived on canoe or foot from Cleveland by way of the Cuyahoga to the Portage to the Tuscarawas rivers or by ox-drawn cart following the state road from Pennsylvania to Canton then cutting wider Indian trails to their destination.

Foresighted surveyors while platting Stark County had included “Fractions” of land west of the Tuscarawas.

The surveying went according to the laws of the Land Ordinance of 1785, which provided for six-mile square townships to be created in the newly acquired land, the township would then be divided into one-square mile sections, with each section encompassing 640 acres.

The federal government reserved sections eight, eleven, twenty-six, and twenty-nine to provide veterans of the American Revolution with land bounties for their service during the war.

The fraction in the northwest part of Stark County was settled before the land on the east bank of the Tuscarawas.

Matthew Rowland purchased one of these fractions of land and recorded the proprietorship at Canton on March 23, 1814.

Rowland platted the town and offered the 79 lots for sale at a public auction in Canton.

It was fashionable at the time to name frontier towns after European cities (witness Paris, Ohio, founded in Stark two months before Milan).

Milan was the only village in the township until the building of the canal between 1826 and 1828, which brought about the town of Fulton on the other side of the river.

Milan boasted churches, cemeteries, and a grocery built to service the hundreds of canal workers.

American transportation such as it is, even this balance was tipped again because all the main highways favored the Fulton side of the river.