[2] The county, named for the portage between the Cuyahoga and Tuscarawas rivers, was created in 1807 and formally organized in 1808.

[7] They were a mixed culture people and also exhibited signs of picking up traits from both Fort Ancients and Iroquoians.

The Erie lost around 1650 and the Whittlesey were likely similarly subjugated afterwards, as the Iroquois conquered all the way to the shores of Lake Michigan by the 1670s.

[8] The Iroquois placed a vassal tribe of captured Huron in the area who became known as the Wyandot, while they conquered further west.

[9] Later, the French made it to the Mississippi River and volunteered to aid the Natives in that region to push the Iroquois back to New York.

By the end of the Beaver Wars, the Wyandot had broken free of Iroquois control and reabsorbed surviving Hurons taking refuge all over the Great Lakes, but set aside the area roughly between the Cuyahoga River, the Mahoning River and the Ohio-Pennsylvania border as a collective hunting ground, to be enjoyed by all the tribes of the region.

The Lenape had a village around modern day Youngstown, possibly established during the 1690s, from which they and the Seneca and Shawnee from further south staged ventures into the region[10] and up in Ashtabula County, the Ottawas, or Mississaugas, from the western end of Lake Erie were allowed to maintain a village at Conneaut.

[14] The region continued being used as such until around 1785,[15] when the newly formed United States tried issuing a treaty stripping the vast majority of what is now Ohio from Native control and began offering subsidies for people to move into the region, sparking the Northwest Indian War from 1785-1795.

[16] In the aftermath, the government issued the Treaty of Greenville,[17] which stripped even more land from the Natives than originally planned and opened up northeast Ohio for white settlement for the first time.

Most Natives did not leave and mixed tribal communities still existed all over the state for some time afterwards, with permanent Ottawa, Seneca, and Wyandot villages still existing in what is now Portage and Geauga Counties,[18] but all written accounts of Natives seems to have ceased sometime around the War of 1812, which is also when the Shawnee War (1811-1813) was occurring.

It is unclear where the Natives went, after that, but this may coincide with the 1811–1812 New Madrid earthquakes, one of the most massive earthquakes to ever hit the east coast in recorded history, and was interpreted by many Ohio Natives that they should throw their support behind Shawnee cult leader, Tenskwatawa, at the Prophettown stronghold, which also coincides with the outbreak of the Shawnee War, later that year.

[21] Portage County is also home to a burial mound—Towner's Mound, in Franklin Township—which outdates all the above mentioned cultures.

After the discovery of the New World, the land that became Portage County was originally part of the French colony of Canada (New France), which was ceded in 1763 to Great Britain and renamed the Province of Quebec.

In June 1799, Benjamin Tappan, Jr. arrived and founded Ravenna, David Daniels came to what is now Palmyra Township, and Ebenezer Sheldon settled in what is now Aurora.

In 1800, the area was made part of Trumbull County, which followed the boundaries of the Connecticut Western Reserve.

[44] In addition, there are parts of five neighboring districts which serve portions of Portage County residents.

In addition to the cities, village, and townships, the United States Census Bureau has four census-designated places (CDP) in Portage County.

These CDPs are for statistical purposes only and have no government or official boundaries separate from the township they are located in.

All 17 places are considered part of whatever jurisdiction they are located in (township or municipality) and have no formal boundaries or additional government of their own.

While the portions of Camp Garfield are still considered part of the various townships they cover, the land is under the jurisdiction of the US federal government.