Point Park stands on a high bluff overlooking the entrance to Ashtabula Harbor, a vantage point from which people have watched the harbor’s business activity for almost two centuries and one of only a few such views of a working harbor along the Great Lakes. From there, the dock below, pleasure boaters, the Ashtabula Lighthouse, the operation of the Bascule Lift Bridge, and Lake Erie can be seen. Freighters dock along the west side of the port to be loaded with coal, while railcars carrying coal on the east side of the river dump it into a loading area, from which it moves by conveyor through the massive coal arch to the west side, then to the dock and into awaiting freighters that depart the Ashtabula River past the lighthouses on the west break wall in the outer harbor. The site was originally part of the Western Reserve and Connecticut Land Company land purchased by Nehemiah Hubbard, passed to his heirs, and remained unsettled until the 1830s. The Hubbard family built a home there and later converted it into a hotel called the Ohio Exchange. By 1874 the hotel was known as the Lakeside House and had been remodeled to sixty rooms, and it was later renamed the Point Park Hotel before being torn down several years afterward. During that era, many people gathered at the park, where the landowners maintained a pathway up the hillside and provided benches and gardens for visitors. After the hillside and river frontage were sold to the railroad, the hillside was cut back to create more railroad yards and docks. The City of Ashtabula bought the land from Conrail in 1981, plans to renovate the park began in 1991, and work on the site started in 1999.