The Hidden Valley
Heart, History and Stories from a Sunday in the Cuyahoga

Canalway Visitor’s Center, which resides within 306 acres of Cleveland’s industrial heart in the Cuyahoga Valley, is located in Cuyahoga Heights on E. 49th Street. Through exhibits and interpretative programming, the Visitor’s Center shows the stories of the Hidden Valley--the Cuyahoga Valley. The Hidden Valley contains stories of native and immigrant people, of places born by a canal, and of industrial growth at the mouth of a great river. The stories tell of environmental action and a wilderness coming back to itself.

One Sunday morning, my husband and I rode our bicycles north of Rockside Road to Harvard, quickly leaving the National Park and entering lands conserved by the Cleveland Metroparks. I was surprised to find myself surrounded by deep and diverse vegetation, well-established wildflowers, and shade trees. We were riding in places were industry had once and still does flourish, but we were being trailed by butterflies and dragonflies. The flowers in the Valley are mostly ephemeral wildflowers native to the area, and in mid-to-late summer, tall goldenrod, prairie grasses, and asters. New high-tension bridges cross major east-west thoroughfares, each with Metroparks and Canal Plaques, showing the story of two establishments with a united vision.

At the beginning, the River was just crooked. Before Moses Cleaveland arrived at the mouth of the Cuyahoga, the Iroquois called it Cuyahoga, “crooked river.” The Crooked River begins in Hambden Township in Geauga County, flows south through Portage and Summit counties, into places like Kent and Cuyahoga Falls, reaches an escarpment near Akron and is redirected north to Lake Erie traveling through Independence and Cuyahoga Heights to flow into Lake Erie west of downtown Cleveland. The River is 100 miles long and drains an area of 813 square miles through a system of waterways that drain the Cuyahoga River watershed. The River constantly changes its course as silt deposits in a strong storm and erodes land to scoop out a deeper curve.

The Native Americans who settled on the Cuyahoga were hunters and gatherers, but became settled farmers, and found a changed life. Their story, which ended badly, was followed by the arrival of European farmers, former slaves, and missionaries, people on the move, looking to make changes, pushing through to the western frontier with the arrival of fur traders.

In 1832, the Ohio and Erie Canal, which linked Cleveland to New York to New Orleans, was built with a series of locks to lower barges to a depth where they could continue along the upward-flowing River, and industry came to reside in the Valley. The Canal allowed crops to reach the market and brought people to the region including industrialists like Rockefeller and Seiberling. The River ran parallel, and still does. Industry grew, and with the growth of industry and the arrival of those who lived along Millionaire’s Row on Euclid Avenue, including John Rockefeller, came people from all over the world—Irish, Italians, Hungarians, and pretty much all the other European countries were represented in Cleveland in the late 19th into the early 20th century as people sought a better life in America.

Cleveland and Ohio City were separated by the Cuyahoga. Ohio City was the northern gateway to the Midwest and Cleveland was the terminus of the East. But then we became linked by bridges and still are, although the towns have been united, but somehow we’re still separate in some way. In Cleveland, you’re a west sider or an east sider. That story continues.

We have stories to tell of people trying to figure where they fit into the great place and time called Life. When Rockefeller was living on Euclid Avenue the Flats were settled by Irish shantytowns. The mansions fell while immigrants settled in Tremont and Slavic Village. South of Cleveland, German Zoar Separatists settled the utopian Zoar Village along the Canal. The Moravian mission for the Delaware Native Americans became the first Euro-American settlement, Schoenbrunn Village. When the Canal went out of service, the railroad took over in the Valley, and Canton was born. Some parts of the canal were built over for things like the Jaite Paper Mill and American Steel and Wire who used canal water. Lives continued to be built within the Valley.

In 1969, the Cuyahoga River burned. We used the River to manufacture, and we killed it. People laughed about our Burning River. Time magazine reported that the Federal Water Pollution Control Administration noted that the Cuyahoga had no visible signs of life, not even those living things that usually thrive on wastes. The Burning River we once destroyed woke the country up to how we were destroying our natural resources, and a grassroots environmental movement began. The Cuyahoga River fire spurred an avalanche of pollution control activities, which resulted in the Clean Water Act, Great Lake Water Quality Agreement, and the creation of the Federal Environmental Protection Agency.

Some places along the Canal were left alone. With environmental attention, the Valley has become a balanced ecosystem of prairies and meadows, forests and swamps, wetlands and rivers. The Canalway was designated a National Heritage Area in 1996, which has helped revitalize it by preserving natural areas, historic sites and cultural treasures. The Ohio EPA considers the final forty miles of the Cuyahoga a “recovering system” and cleanup is continuing. Fish populations have improved significantly in the mainstream of the Valley over the past 35 years. Industry and parks districts and environmental groups have worked together to save the River and its valley

The Towpath is 73 miles developed for recreational use, which will one day extend from Cleveland’s canal Basin Park to over and New Philadelphia. The 33,000-acre Cuyahoga Valley National Park is the third most visited national park in the nation. We can enjoy the Valley by walking or cycling along the Towpath, on the Cuyahoga County Railroad, which runs from Independence to Akron and soon to Canton, or by driving the scenic byway. Along the way, interpretative signs tell the history of locks and mills and homes; the ruins sometimes remain.

We decry our population loss, but the Valley is the place from which we grow, and the 2000 census counted the 2,945,831 people living in the area surrounding the Valley (which includes the surrounding counties and Akron) making the metropolitan area the 14th largest in the nation. No wonder we’re looking at Cleveland+ the surrounding areas, drawing on our strengths and creating a unified front of diverse cultures and natural resources, cities almost no longer separated due to the confluence of suburban sprawl. The Hidden Valley is the story of change.

That Sunday morning, after enjoying the stories told at the Visitor’s Center, we took a side path high above the River and looked down from an overlook where we could see the crooked river meandering with bends widening and narrowing this way and that. Three men stood, quietly rooted to the view, and they told us they visit that exact spot every week and watch it change. The place felt urban. But it felt natural.

The Hidden Valley has lots of stories to tell, same as the men that tell them. The real story is of the Hidden Valley is one of salvation. We experienced it on a Sunday.

From Cool Cleveland contributor Claudia J. Taller ctallerwritesATwowway.com

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