Sturgeon Point is a point of land jutting into Lake Erie and the site of the first paid summer resort in Geneva Township, later Geneva-on-the-Lake Village. On July 4, 1869, Cullen Spencer and his friend Lyman Scott opened a public picnic area on the five-acre point for vacationers visiting the lake, and in 1873 investors added a merry-go-round to the grounds. Residents began converting farmhouses into boardinghouses and built inns, lodges, and cottages for this clientele. Railroads were largely responsible for the resort’s success, first linking Geneva to the Cleveland area in 1853 and to Youngstown in 1873, after which the final four miles to the resort were often traveled by horse-drawn taxi along a rutted road. The point takes its name from the abundance of lake sturgeon that once gathered there; these fish could weigh 200 pounds or more, reach up to 6 feet in length, and were known as the great fighting fish. Once considered a nuisance valued only for fertilizer, sturgeon became commercially sought around 1870 for smoked fish and caviar, leading to overfishing and the collapse of the Lake Erie sturgeon fishery by the early 1900s.