Munroe Falls is a city in east-central Summit County, Ohio, United States, along the Cuyahoga River.

Like much of the Connecticut Western Reserve, the area that makes up present-day Munroe Falls was previously inhabited by various tribes of American Indians.

[4] When the Western Reserve began being surveyed in 1796, what is now Munroe Falls was mostly in the southern part of the survey township Town 3, Range 10 (later to be Stow Township), then a part of Washington County before being placed in the new Jefferson County the following year.

[5] The first settlers in present-day Munroe Falls, a group of around 40 people including Francis Kelsey and William Stow, came in 1809.

[6] William Stow built a log house to serve as his residence at what is now the northwest corner of Ohio State Route 91 and Munroe Falls Avenue.

[9] In 1817 a wooden dam was built to provide power for both mills and the name of the village was changed to Florence.

[10] Around 1836, William and Edmund Munroe (also spelled Monroe) from Boston arrived and purchased the two mills and approximately 250 acres (101 ha) of land around them to lay out a new village, which they named Munroe Falls.

[12] The "Munroe Falls Manufacturing Co." was granted a charter by the Ohio Legislature in April 1837 in order to cultivate and manufacture cotton, flour, paper, silk, sugar and wool, including machinery and tools towards these purposes.

[13] The keys to their plans were to found a silk industry, which involved cultivating mulberry trees and silkworms.

[15] For the next few years the local economy thrived under the nearly unlimited credit afforded to its customers by the Company and its Bank, but ultimately the macroeconomics of the period prevailed, and both the Company and Bank failed, leaving many local residents holding worthless currency.

[15] After about 10 years, which included the economic instability of the Panic of 1837,[6] the Munroes, who had arrived wealthy, defaulted to many of the creditors and the properties they owned were taken over by other individuals.

The building burned down approximately 1–2 years later and the present factory - today owned by Sonoco Products - was built on the same site.

This action was taken in order to avoid becoming a part of neighboring Stow, which was applying for similar status and had included sections of Munroe Falls in its application.

[9] In the early 2000s, the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Summit County determined that the oxygen levels were too low in the Cuyahoga River, due mostly to the stagnant pool behind the Munroe Falls dam.

[citation needed] Munroe Falls is located in eastern Summit County adjacent to the cities of Stow to the north, Tallmadge to the south, and Cuyahoga Falls to the west with the village of Silver Lake on the northwest.

[34] A small portion of Munroe Falls is part of the neighboring Tallmadge school district.