A history of Cleveland, Ohio, Volume I, Part 2

Author: Orth, Samuel Peter, 1873-1922; Clarke, S.J., publishing company
Publication date: 1910
Publisher: Chicago-Cleveland : The S.J. Clarke Publishing Co.
Number of Pages: 1262

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CHAPTER I.

GEOLOGY.

By Professor W. M. Gregory, Cleveland Normal School.

The earth formations of Cleveland can be traced to the events of three geologi- cal eras. Its oldest formation is the bed-rock of the Paleozoic era. The important and widespread Pleistocene deposits were formed during the Glacial period. The most recent geology is the record of the present streams and land movements.

In the middle west the ancient rocks or the hard crystallines are represented by the Archean formation of the Superior region. While in the northern and eastern half of the Mississippi valley the formations are almost entirely of the Palæozoic era in which the coal, limestone, shale and sandstone deposits of the Ohio region were formed. The Carboniferous shale and coal formations of central and southeastern Ohio were formed in a great depression which existed between the Devonian limestone of the Cincinnati anti cline and Appalachia. This region has been uplifted and dissected by stream action, making a hill and valley country, which is well adapted to the economical mining of coal. The lime- stone of the state constitutes a belt extending from the islands in Lake Erie, southward along the western border of the state.

The lowest beds outcropping in Cleveland are the Devonian shales and sand- stones, which constitute the Erie shale or Chagrin formation and the Cleveland shale. Above these are the beds of the lower carboniferous which form the red Bedford shale and the Berea grit; both of these formations dip slightly to the southeast and near the limits of the county pass beneath the following beds : the black Berea or Sunberry shale which lies just above the Berea grit, the Cuya- hoga shale and the Cuyahoga formation.

The Erie shale or Chagrin formation which constitutes the rock bluff on Lake Erie and is found in the sections exposed in the creek valleys, consists of a soft gray shale with many calcareous fucoids and iron concretions. These beds are generally distinctly laminated, faulted and contain a vast number of

HISTORY OF CLEVELAND

small folds which in the stream valleys are due to the soft material buckling under the weight of the rock above. The gray shales of this formation occur up to about two hundred feet above Lake Erie in all of the rock sections in the valleys of the creeks in this region. The shales of these formations are used extensively in the manufacture of brick, tile, sewer pipe and paving blocks by the various clay working plants in the city. In the valley of Mill creek at the plant of the Cleveland Brick and Clay Company, there occurred in August, 1908, a re- markable earth slip. The amount of material which was displaced vertically some seven feet in the face of the one hundred and twelve feet high cliff was estimated at one hundred thousand tons.

The black bituminous Cleveland shale is thirty to forty feet in thickness and contains many concretions of pyrite and weathers rapidly upon exposure to the atmosphere. The Bedford shale, named from its numerous outcrops at Bedford, varies from its prevailing red color to blue in different localities and is from fifty to one hundred and fifty feet in thickness. In this formation at Cleveland, there occurs a thirty foot bed of sandstone which supplied for years a good flag- ging and building stone. This sandstone is the bluestone from which the first grist mill wheels for Cleveland were obtained and is now quarried in a very limited way along Mill creek. The eastern outcrop of this same stone is the Euclid sandstone of East Cleveland which has been used generally for sidewalks and foundations. The creeks whose valleys are in bed-rock in this region nearly all form waterfalls where the stream passes from the hard stratum of the Cleve- land bluestone to the underlying shale, which is soft and rapidly eroded.

The Berea grit in northern Ohio is easily traced in the outcrops of the hard resistant sandstone at Medina, Amherst, Berea, Independence, Penninsula and Chagrin falls. These sandstone beds vary from fifty feet at Berea, to more than two hundred feet at Amherst, where is located the most extensive sandstone quarries of the state. The extent of this stratum and its homeogeneous texture combined with its cheapness creates an increasing demand for it as building ma- terial and paving blocks. The gritty texture of the Berea stone makes it espe- cially suitable for abrasive purposes and more than four-fifths of the grindstones of the United States are quarried and manufactured in the northern part of Ohio.

The Sunberry shale is a thin black layer above the Berea grit, and in places is very fossiliferous, especially at Berea and Chagrin falls. The Cuyahoga forma- tion consists largely of shales and flaggy sandstones which are well exposed in the bluffs of the Cuyahoga valley.

The Black Hand formation contains a conglomerate which constitutes the highest land in the county. The conglomerate has a coarse sandstone as a matrix in which white quartz pebbles are embedded. This formation dips to the southeast and is at the base of the coal series of Ohio, and it is quite possible that it has the same relation to the Pennsylvania coal fields. The larger streams of north- eastern Ohio have their source in spring from the base of this conglomerate. Little Mountain, the highest northern point of Ohio, is capped with this forma- tion which has a similar relation to the highlands in the southern and eastern part of Cuyahoga county. The conglomerate is well exposed in the gorge of the Cuyahoga river below the falls, where the soft shales have been eroded and this rock forms the cliffs. The Boston ledges, an old picnic ground between Akron

face above Lake Erie. Vertical scale, 1 inch corresponds to 160 feet.) surface of the old delta and the various beach lines. (Figures are elevations of the sur- This section shows the eastern rock edge of the preglacial valley of the Cuyahoga River, the

CROSS-SECTION FROM LAKE ERIE ON THE LINE OF EAST 79TH STREET EXTENDED

Lake Erie

100

150

200

50 St Clair

600 Superior

Sand

pas Hough f

bes Euclid

bioa Central

the Woodland Ave

Gros Grand

85 Creek

015 Kinsman

15 Creek

Diza Aurina

Shale

Sandy Loam

Iso Union

clay

065 Petra

bies Broadway

6iso Harrand

16100 Creek

195

620 City Limits

SOUTH TO THE LIMITS OF CLEVELAND

clay

Heavy Quicksand

HISTORY OF CLEVELAND

and Bedford, now almost destroyed by a railroad cut, were cliffs of this con- glomerate which had various fantastic forms: "The Balanced Rock," "Noah's Ark" and "Gibraltar." Chesterland Caves, near Gates Mills, Steven's Gulch west of Chardon, Thompson and Nelson ledges, are all in this Carboniferous conglomerate, which has a distinct influence upon the topographic features of this region.

The general relief of Cleveland was determined by glacial action which dis- tributed vast amounts of rock material over this region and molded the various surface forms. During the glacial epoch, a continental ice-sheet existed over a large part of the northern area of this continent, and in Ohio, all but the south- eastern part of the state was thus covered. The ice-sheet not only transported much material but it eroded the surface and smoothed off its irregularities. The hard rock material, as it was carried along in the base of the ice mass, often channeled the country bed-rock, producing striæ and grooves. The Corniferous limestone of Kelley's Island in Lake Erie, contains some of the best illustrations of the abrasive action accomplished by the glacier. The sandstone of Cleveland heights has in many places striations produced in this manner, while the granite boulders which have been found quite widely distributed throughout the city were not "hurled by a furious volcanic eruption from the depths now occupied by Lake Erie," but are witnesses of the ancient ice-sheet which transported them to this locality from the northern Canadian ledges. The vast amount of glacial drift that is distributed over this region forms a veneer coating on the old rock surface which is thickest in the filled valleys of the old rivers and thinnest on the high- lands. In various places in the Cuyahoga valley and near Kamm's Corners in the Rocky river valley a compact till occurs, which is distinctly different from the till lying above it and was deposited by an ice-sheet older than that which formed the present surface of this locality. Along the edge of this ice-sheet there was de- posited irregular belts of rolling hills called moraines, which are composed of un- stratified clay, sand and a great variety of boulders. In this city such deposits constitute the Cleveland moraine, which extends south of Big creek, eastward through Garfield park, Randall and Corlett. These belts of drift have greatly modified the drainage lines of northern Ohio. One of these moraines diverted the Grand river from its preglacial channel through Geneva village to its present course which is parallel for a long distance with the shore of Lake Erie. The upper course of the Cuyahoga is due to glacial material, which near Akron turned the river northward into its old preglacial channel.

When the ice front in northern Ohio retreated by melting, the resulting water was drained southward into the Mississippi, but when the ice withdrew north of the Ohio divide the water was impounded between the highland to the south and the edge of the ice-sheet forming the glacial lake. Lakes of this formation existed at the ends of the various ice-lobes which occupied the basins of the Great Lakes. As the ice retreated, lakes were formed at successive lower levels. In this region Lake Maumee was the first of these glacial lakes and as the ice retreated, Lake Whittlesey, Lake Warren, and the Algonquin Lakes were suc- cessively formed.

Lake Maumee was formed at the end of the Erie ice lobe in the northwestern part of Ohio. The Maumee beaches and old lake plains are distinct surface fea-

HISTORY OF CLEVELAND

tures between Cleveland and Toledo. In Cleveland, this old Maumee beach is two hundred feet above Lake Erie and as this lake formed an embayment in the Cuyahoga valley, its beaches are found along its sides as far south as Boston.

The highway from Brooklyn to Willow is just above the crest of the Maumee beach and on the eastern side of the valley are many ridges and terraces which belong to the Lake Maumee level. Lake Maumee drained to the south by a river which occupied the present Maumee valley, but when the icelobe uncovered a lower outlet which was to the north in Michigan, the lake was lowered thirty feet, and its successor is called Lake Whittlesley.

Lake Whittlesley was nearly twice the present area of Lake Erie and it drained to the north across Michigan into Lake Chicago, which stood at the end of the Michigan icelobe and was the predecessor of Lake Michigan. The beaches of Lake Whittlesley extend from Buffalo nearly to Fort Wayne, then northward to Ann Arbor and into the Saginaw valley. In this city the Dennison avenue ridge indicates where this lake stood. The extensive sand and gravel beaches extending from south of Harvard street to the Fairmount reservoir were formed during the time that Lake Whittlesley existed at this level. The regularity of these beaches attracted the attention of Colonel Charles Whittlesley, who traced them some distance westward from this city and this ancient glacial lake was named "Whit- tlesley" after this Cleveland man who was one of the earliest investigators of the history of the Great Lakes.

The retreat of the ice-sheet still farther to the north opened an outlet which lowered Lake Whittlesley nearly fifty feet and formed Lake Warren, which stood one hundred and fifteen feet above Lake Erie. The ridge upon which Eu- clid avenue is located is part of this shore line of Lake Warren. The further re- treat of the ice-sheet to the Ontario highland opened much lower outlets and all of the smaller glacial lakes blended into a large one called Lake Algonquin, whose outlet was through Lake Nipissing to Lake Ontario, thence into the St. Lawrence outlet. A later change caused the water of Lake Erie to flow over the Niagara escarpment at Lewistown and then Niagara falls commenced to cut back its course to Lake Erie.

The influence of these old beach lines has been quite marked upon the life of the city. The Indian traces were on the crests of these beach ridges and the first blazed trail into Cleveland was likewise along the top of one of these ridges. The early settlers selected farms along these ridges ; such settlements were be- ginning to appear in 1820 along the Euclid and Woodland ridges. Other settlers found homes and farms along the Detroit and Dennison ridges on the west side, while the St. Clair ridge offered similar situations. In the further growth of Cleveland the ridges formed important roads in the woods. On the St. Clair ridge was the North road and the Middle road on the Euclid ridge led eastward to Buffalo, while the South road followed for a part of the way the Woodland ridge. Today these old ridges are the source of sand and gravel for building pur- poses, and in many places these operations have obliterated all traces of their existence. In some of the buildings the difference in elevation between the crest and the base of the beach is distinctly shown as in the old Arcade between Euclid and Superior avenue.

This diagram shows the old preglacial valley which was cut in the shales and later filled by

CROSS-SECTION OF CLEVELAND ON THE LINE OF LORAIN AVENUE EXTENDED

F's Highiand A

so Denison fre

V Gro Wellington Ave

Shale

IRIS Gordon Ave

Section East and West

sand

no Harbor

clay

Quick sand

ono Pearl St

100 Bradford St

Track

Grava!

Sult & sond

Perry

clay

Gravel

Quicksand

sand

we Willson Ave & E Prospect Sì

shale

Doen Brook

35 Doen St

Dugway Bread

glacial and fluvial deposits

EAST AND WEST TO THE CITY LIMITS

CHAPTER II.

GEOGRAPHY OF CLEVELAND. By Professor W. M. Gregory, Cleveland Normal School.

LOCATION

Mathematically, Cleveland is in eighty-one degrees, forty minutes, nine and six-tenths seconds of west longtitude from the Greenwich meridian and has the north latitude of forty-one degrees, thirty minutes, one and six-tenths seconds.1

Sunny Naples has nearly the same latitude as this city, while Chicago and New York have a similar relative location. In the early stage of its growth, Cleve- land was located as a town, six miles from Newburg on the Heights, and now it is the metropolis of this state, at the center of the south shore of Lake Erie. In this location Cleveland holds a strategetic point in trade, for it is midway between the great sources of the most important raw materials of commerce-the iron and the coal. This city stands the nearest of all the lake ports to the nation's coal wealth, and is the center of the lake coal trade for the northwest and the Onta- rio peninsula. The lake passenger traffic centers here and its median location in the great rail traffic between the west and east is a strong factor in its industrial strength. So important was the central location of this city, that in the early colonial days, Benjamin Franklin considered it an important post between Pitts- burg and Detroit. Today within five hundred miles of this city are the most im- portant cities of the nation, all the vast wealth of coal, a liberal share of its iron ore, three-quarters of the grain is produced, seven-eighths of the manufacturing is done, and almost a half of the people of the country live. The central location of the city allows the external forces to exert a potent influence in the develop- ment of its various institutions.

AREA.

The city expands along the southern shore of Lake Erie for nine miles, and it extends for more than six miles to the south. Its present area of 41.17 2 square miles is about equally divided by the river and the geographic center of the city is within the yard of the Standard Oil Company's plant on Broadway. The area of Cleveland is larger in proportion to its population than many others of its class, and hence there is less of the congestion that is so common in other large cities. The city spreading over a large area makes the land relatively plentiful and cheap. This city has a larger proportion of home owners than any of the other large cities, more than thirty-seven per cent of the homes being owned, and it can, therefore be justly called, "The City of Homes."

1 This is the exact longitude and latitude of the lighthouse on the end of the government pier in the Cleveland Harbor, according to the most recent calculation by the lake survey. ' Excluding Collinwood.

HISTORY OF CLEVELAND

SHORE FEATURES.

The shore-line of Lake Erie at Cleveland is remarkably regular, having only the slight indentations of Rocky river, a few small brooks and the large estuary of the Cuyahoga. A striking feature of this shore topography is the almost un- broken succession of bold cliffs, standing from sixty to eighty feet above the water. These cliffs are of rock from Edgewater Park westward, to the emergence of the old preglacial channel of Rocky river which is nearly a quarter of a mile west of the present mouth of this stream. Along the water front of Cleveland, eastward from Edgewater park, the cliff material is entirely of lake sand and clay, which gives a much less abrupt slope on the cliff face than is present on the rock to the west. The soft materials were easily eroded under the action of the lake waves and shore currents. Colonel Charles Whittlesley made several surveys of the landward retreat of the shore line, and from 1800 to 1850 in the region east of the Cuyahoga's mouth, there was a loss of land to the lake of over five hundred feet. The encroachment of the lake upon the land, is now effectively prevented by the extensive breakwater system, the numerous commercial docks and many private protective piers. The steep face of the rock cliff of the western part of the shore, makes it picturesque but dangerous. The sudden summer storms which rise so unexpectedly from Lake Erie, have wrecked many small pleasure crafts and not a few larger boats on its perpendicular cliffs. This danger the Indians fully appreciated and it was their custom to render a generous offering of tobacco to the Great Spirit for safe passage while journeying along this part of the shore.

SURFACE FEATURES.

The surface upon which Cleveland is built, is characterized by its several di- verse parts, each of which exerts a considerable influence upon the city's life. These various relief features are as follows: The flats along the Cuyahoga, the delta and lake plain on which Cleveland's business centers, the cliff regions gullied by the brooks, and the heights or uplands.

THE HEIGHTS.

The heights are prominent in the east and northeastern part of the city, where there is a continual bluff from Euclid to East Cleveland, extending through Lake View cemetery and along Woodland Hills avenue south to the valley of the. Cuyahoga river. The average elevation above Lake Erie of the uplands is about two hundred and eighty feet, and the highest point in the city is south of Gar- field monument, which stands on the edge of heights. West of the river the heights are subdued and do not attain the elevation that is present in those on the east side. It has been shown that glacial action scrubbed off the softer sandstone in the west, rendering indistinct the slopes and cliffs. The heights are underlain by the Cleveland bluestone, which constituted the important building and flagstone in the early days of the city, and to its resistant character is due the cliffs on the east side. A large quantity of this stone was quarried in the Doan Brook region in 1850 and it is still worked in a limited way at Ambler Heights and on Mill creek near the state insane asylum. The edge of the cliff along the heights, is an

Character

Total Depth

of Formations

Drift

Thickness of Formation 40'

240

4-8 0]

Ohio

and

Bedford

720}

Shales

960'

12001

1310'

1440'

Corniferous and Monroe

1680']

formations

1820'

.640'

2060'

Salina formation

23001

493'

Niagara formation

25401

203'

Clinton

formation

2780

GEOLOGICAL COLUMN FOR CLEVELAND, OIIIO

Based upon the well record of a deep boring for salt at the Union Salt Company's plant in Newburgh. The record was interpreted by Dr. Edward Orton in Volume VI, page 352, Ohio Geological Survey. The surface at the head of this well is 207 feet above Lake Erie, which is very ucar the top of the Bedford shales. Scale, five-eights of 1 inch corre- sponds to 240 fcet.

HISTORY OF CLEVELAND

attractive residential location because of the magnificent view of the city and the lake. Some of the finest homes in the city have been built along Overlook Road. Homes in this region are characterized by the beauty of the estate and their magnificence. The favorite estate of John D. Rockefeller is on the heights, and slopes down to the lake plain. Its location makes possible a wonderful combination of hills, brooks, drives and lakes, for which Forest Hills is noted. The heights are growing more slowly than any other part of the city, but in the future they will be the residential section of the city.

The elevation of the heights particularly fit it for a residential section of the city, but the elevation offers considerable disadvantage to all lines of traffic en- tering the city from the south and east. The large east and west trunk railroads are confined to the lake plain, between the cliff and the lake, while other lines follow the creek valleys, which afford a natural and easy grade from the heights down to the lowlands.

THE CLIFF SLOPES AND GULLY REGIONS.

The elevation of the heights above the lake, makes the slope from the uplands to the lower lake plain very abrupt in places, and this steep slope gives the smaller streams considerable velocity. All the small streams tributary to the Cuyahoga and the lake have eroded deeply their valleys, and near where the streams pass from the heights to the lower plain of the old lake delta, this gullying is most pronounced. The slope of the cliffs is most abrupt in the region of Ambler Heights, Lake View cemetery and East Cleveland, where glacial action did not remove the sandstone cap, but where the cliff is largely shale it has rapidly weathered into long gentle slopes. The development of gullies by the creek is very pronounced at Euclid postoffice, where Euclid creek has a deep, narrow valley, which in places is less than an eighth of a mile wide, and nearly one hundred and eighty feet deep. In this region the Erie shale is capped by a heavy sandstone which has been rapidly trenched by water action. Nine Mile creek in East Cleveland has accomplished some gullying, on the face of the steep slope in this region, while only a small amount of slope carving has been done by the branches of Dugway brook in the Lake View cemetery and on the Rocke- feller estate. The effect of this difference of elevation between the lake plain and the heights is well illustrated in the narrow and deep cut valley of Doan brook in which for over a mile this brook flows rapidly over a rock strewn bed in a valley nearly a hundred feet deep and less than an eighth of a mile wide. The natural beauty of this brook valley and its uselessness for private purposes has especially fitted it for park use, and in 1890 it was ceded by Martha Ambler to the city. The depth of the valley prohibits many cross roads and rimming its edges are wide boulevards which converge at the Shaker lakes. The natural beauty of the valley has attracted many to build magnificent homes along its edge, and the gullying done by this creek as it passes to the plain, has made a

HISTORY OF CLEVELAND

charming scenic region, of what otherwise would have been a monotonous up- land with a steep slope.

On the slope from the uplands to the lake plain, Giddings brook and the branches of Kingsbury run have accomplished only a slight amount of trenching in a few ravines in the region of Woodland Hills avenue. Mill creek has cut a deep and narrow valley where it turns to the south near the state insane asylum, and here its branches have done considerable gullying in Calvary cemetery and Garfield park. The valley of this latter creek as it descends from the highlands is utilized as a highway into Cleveland for all traffic from the southeast. The double tracks and storage yards of the Pennsylvania railroad and the Wheeling and Lake Erie occupy this land between Cleveland and Bedford. The paved highway the Cleveland and Akron Electric Railroad find the grade of this valley and its direction of great advantage in handling interurban traffic.

THE DELTA AND THE LAKE PLAIN."

When Lake Erie was expanded and stood two hundred feet above its present level, it then covered a large part of Cleveland, and the present level lake plain of sand and gravel was formed. The lake when thus expanded had a large arm or embayment to the south, into which the Cuyahoga flowed from the south and con- structed a delta in the same manner that it is now carrying sand and silt into the present lake. In gradually falling and receding into its present position, Lake Erie stood at several successive levels, all of which are plainly marked by the former beach lines and the delta was continually built lakeward, so that a deep covering of sand was deposited over much of the region. The old delta is roughly outlined as a triangle with its base extending from Edgewater park on the west to Gordon park on the east, and it tapers south to an apex in the valley of the Cuyahoga river.

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A history of Cleveland, Ohio, Volume I, Part 2

Author: Orth, Samuel Peter, 1873-1922; Clarke, S.J., publishing company Publication date: 1910 Publisher: Chicago-Cleveland : The S.J. Clarke Publishing Co. Number of Pages: 1262

Author: Orth, Samuel Peter, 1873-1922; Clarke, S.J., publishing company
Publication date: 1910
Publisher: Chicago-Cleveland : The S.J. Clarke Publishing Co.
Number of Pages: 1262