Sandusky, OH

Sandusky faces one of the finest natural harbours on the Great Lakes, and it has always known how to use it. In the nineteenth century the bay made it a port for coal, fish and ice — and, more secretly, a principal terminus of the Underground Railroad: from Sandusky's docks fugitives from slavery crossed Lake Erie to freedom in Canada, a passage Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote into Uncle Tom's Cabin. The city's street plan itself is a curiosity, laid out in part on Masonic symbols.

Its modern fame is louder: Cedar Point, the amusement park on the sandspit across the bay, has operated since 1870 and reigns as the roller-coaster capital of the world, its skyline of steel loops visible from the whole shore; the ferries to the Lake Erie islands — Kelleys, Put-in-Bay — make Sandusky the gateway to Ohio's summer archipelago. The town honours a gentler ride too, at the Merry-Go-Round Museum in the old post office rotunda. The archive's stage is the Sandusky State Theatre, the 1928 movie palace on Columbus Avenue that serves as the region's performing-arts hall for concerts, touring companies and community seasons. Freedom's harbour, the carousel and the coaster: Sandusky covers the full range of human transport.