[4][5] Located at the confluence of the Mahoning River and Mosquito Creek, Niles is a suburb in the Youngstown–Warren metropolitan area.

Located in the nation's former industrial belt, the city's economy focused initially on iron manufacturing but later diversified to include steel and glass production.

[6] After the decline of heavy industry in the region in the 1970s, Niles became a retail hub for the northern Mahoning Valley, with development centered around the Eastwood Mall complex and along the U.S. Route 422 corridor.

In the early 19th century, Heaton built a forge and, later, a charcoal blast furnace in the area just east of what is now the city's central park, on the west side of Mosquito Creek.

Plans to restore the local iron industry floundered because of the exorbitant cost of modernizing outdated mills.

On Easter Sunday, March 23, 1913, heavy rain throughout Ohio, combined with ice and snow that was still on the ground, precipitated massive flooding.

Niles' location in the Mahoning Valley, a center of steel production, ensured that the community would become a destination for immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe in the early 20th century.

Dramatic demographic change fueled ethnic and religious tension throughout the northern United States following World War I, and Niles proved to be no exception to this trend.

In the 1920s, regional chapters of the Ku Klux Klan targeted Niles because of its large Catholic population.

The local mayor's ultimate decision to issue the Klan a permit for the march outraged many of the community's Italian- and Irish-American residents.

[6] In response to the scheduled Klan march, an anti-Klan organization, the Knights of the Flaming Circle, pledged to hold their own parade of 10,000 participants on the same day.

The tornado then moved through Lordstown and Warren, before wreaking havoc on Niles, where it flattened a roller skating rink and shopping mall.

The tornado also leveled dozens of houses, ripped through the city's historic Union Cemetery, injured many people, and took several lives.

[6] A large figure of a gorilla (an advertising tool for a now-defunct ceramic store) is all that remained standing in one district affected by the tornado.

The church's annual celebration of the feast day of Our Lady of Mount Carmel during July is considered one of Ohio's noteworthy Italian-American festivals.

Niles constitutes a mixed-use suburb between Warren and northern Youngstown and is one of the main retail hubs of the Mahoning Valley area.

[18] Eastwood Field, home of the MLB Draft League affiliate Mahoning Valley Scrappers, opened in Niles in 1999.

The Mahoning Valley Scrappers, a short-season Class A minor league baseball team, moved from Erie, Pennsylvania, to Niles in 1999.

Youngstown-based boxer Kelly Pavlik fought a nationally broadcast fight in Niles on July 1, 2003, against Rico Cason.