Cleveland Township is one of fourteen non-functioning county subdivisions (townships) in Rowan County, North Carolina that were established in 1868.

On 18 March 1831, the first post office in the general vicinity of present-day Cleveland was established with John Cowan the first postmaster.

[4] On 7 January 1856, before the Western North Carolina (WNC) Railroad was built, the post office and thus the town in the vicinity of present-day Cleveland were renamed to Rowan Mills, getting this name from a large plantation nearby owned by Osborn Giles Foard (1820-1882), who was also the first Rowan Mills postmaster.

On 2 March 1887, the townspeople, who were all Democrats except for three people, decided to rename the town to Cleveland, in honor of Grover Cleveland, the first Democratic president elected since before the Civil War.

This article about a location in Rowan County, North Carolina is a stub.