Main Street, Peninsula, 1950s, including Scotty's Place and the Peninsula Nite Club.
Courtesy/Peninsula Library & Historical Society
Wilson's Mill, 1957.
Courtesy/Cleveland Press Collection
Mid-19th century communities in the Cuyahoga Valley thrived as canal and mercantile towns that linked the growing cities of Cleveland and Akron. The Village of Peninsula, for example, received money and fame as canal traffic and boat building attracted visitors and new industry, including gristmills and cheese factories. Even after the canal's economic decline and eventual collapse, villages continued to act as commercial centers for surrounding farmers.
A visitor to Peninsula in the late 19th or early 20th centuries could step off a train or canal boat and see a town hall, schoolhouse, meeting hall, tavern, and dance hall as well as several churches, general stores, and sandstone quarries.
Although farmers were mostly self-sufficient, they still needed supplies and services from other businesses. Click the following topics to learn more about the local businesses that supported agricultural life throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.
Wilson Feed Mill
Alexander's Mill, renamed when the Wilson family bought it in 1900, is the last surviving gristmill in Cuyahoga County and one of only a few in Ohio. The mill currently serves as an important supplier of animal feed and other farm products.
Click to learn more about the history and current operations at Wilson Feed Mill.
Peninsula advertisement.
Courtesy/Peninsula Library & Historical Society
General Stores
General stores were places where rural inhabitants could buy supplies that they were unable to make themselves, as well as socialize with friends and neighbors. These stores also often served as post offices and gas stations. Read and hear more about the general stores in Everett during the early 20th century.
Terry Lumber & Supply Company
Terry Lumber & Supply Company is a third-generation business, started by John J. Terry Montequila in 1940. Terry started the business in the village of Boston, and eventually moved it to Peninsula, where he lived and grew up. He sold lumber, coal, farm machinery, and animal feed. Today, Terry Lumber & Supply still operates in Peninsula. Many residents remember how Terry Montequila helped their families during hard times. His dedication to the community illustrates the close relationships and cooperation between village neighbors in the mid-20th century.
Terry Montequila
2011 Oral History Project: Daniel Schneider, former resident of the Schneider Farm (now the Coonrad Ranger Station), grew up with Terry Montequila's children. Daniel recalls how Terry helped the community.
“Yeah, Terry, I tell you, he helped a lot of people in this valley. Because maybe building their house and they'd run out money or whatever: Go get your lumber, build your house, and when you get the money you pay me. There was no signing all these papers or whatever. Eh, a couple people maybe stuck him over the years but most of the people they finished their project, and as they got the money they went down and paid him and he'd just cross it off. And he helped everybody in his dallying years when I used to haul coal, when everybody had coal furnaces yet, before fuel oil furnaces come around and that. You know, people knew that if they needed coal and they were short on money, Terry would make sure they got their coal and then in the summer, when things picked up or whatever, then they'd pay him.”
Water Hauling
Historically, Cuyahoga Valley residents have dealt with limited access to groundwater. Throughout the 20th century, over half of the valley residents lacked wells on their property and were forced to purchase water from an outside source.
Water Hauling
2011 Oral History Project: Warren Roller, who grew up on the former Coliseum property in Richfield, worked as a water hauler in the 1960s, bringing cans of water to over 400 families in the valley.
“When I got outta school, my dad signed for me, I was seven...eighteen years old, and he signed for me to get a bigger truck, a one-and-a-half ton flatbed so I could haul hay on it. In the meantime a water business came up for sale and I had no clue on what a water business was, but I didn't realize that half of the valley, or more than half the valley, bought water because they couldn't get a well. So in interviewing this fella that wanted to sell his water business he had really basically nothing to sell but a worn off truck and loyal people who maybe wouldn't be loyal to me. So I decided to buy a tank and put hoses on it and advertise and for two and a half years I hauled water to people that had cisterns. It was a pretty interesting job because you really get to know everybody in the valley.”
Boot-legging
The Cuyahoga Valley has a rich and colorful history of illegal side businesses. Bootlegging during the Prohibition Era was a lucrative trade. In the 1920s, some Cuyahoga Valley residents smuggled and sold alcohol from their farms for considerable profit.
Illegal Alcohol
2011 Oral History Project: Ott Wilson, who grew up in Bath, remembers learning about and witnessing Peninsula's boot-legging operations during the 1920s.
“Right there at the railroad track right as you come down across the bridge, there was a place called Shaddy's or Scotty's or something like that. When we went to the dances there . . . right there next to it was a dance hall there . . . we could go over there and buy a pint of whiskey. He'd just reach under the bar and get you a pint of whiskey for fifty cents ~laughs~ when we went to the dance. Then around the corner there was a place that had a {unintelligible} and underneath the sidewalk they had a tunnel . . . it was open I guess under there . . . and I'd take Walter Crams, take him down there, and they'd go down in some place and bring up whiskey for him. Lot of times he'd trade grain for whiskey. There was one on . . . there was some in back . . . ~laughs~ I bet I went to fifteen different bootleg places.”
