Trails will be temporarily closed between Red Lock Trailhead and Brandywine Creek from Monday, March 3, to Friday, May 2, 2025 for installation of a new Brandywine Creek culvert. No detour is available.
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The land that today makes up Cuyahoga Valley National Park has been home to humans for thousands of years. Native Americans were the first inhabitants. Different cultures hunted and built villages in the valley during different periods. By the middle 1700s, Europeans were establishing trading posts in the valley and a few decades later settlers from New England started coming to stay. Those frontier communities eventually became towns, their growth helped along by first the canal, then the railroad, and later interstate highways.
The Native American villages, pioneer settlements, and canal worker communities are long gone. But each wave of residents left their mark. The artifacts, trails, farms, old mills, and canal remains of the Cuyahoga Valley provide clues to how past peoples lived their lives. Visiting the park's many historical sites is like visiting different time periods in the valley. Thanks to the park, those special places are preserved.
When Native American tribes seeking refuge arrived in the Ohio Country, they found relatively unoccupied land. The last permanent residents, the Whittlesey, had disappeared from the region in the early 1600s. Between the early 1600s and 1730, the valley had been used primarily as a transportation route for trade and hunting.
American Indians forfeited all lands east of the Cuyahoga River when they signed the Treaty of Greenville in 1795. The result of a decisive loss to General Anthony Wayne at Fallen Timbers, near present day Maumee, Ohio, the treaty opened the Ohio Country to pioneers.
A new kind of people began coming to the Cuyahoga Valley in the late 1700s. Families from Massachusetts, Connecticut, and other New England states had begun moving to the Western Reserve, including land around the Cuyahoga River. These New Englanders were not traders or missionaries. They were settlers looking to make a new life in the valley.
Today's Canal Exploration Center was once operated as a tavern and store by the Gleeson family.
NPS / Ted Toth
Moses and Polly Gleeson
Imagine leaving civilization for the wilderness. By 1818, Moses Gleeson and his wife Polly Richardson Gleeson had moved to Bedford, Ohio, at the edge of wilderness. Like many who came to the new state of Ohio looking for a better life, Mr. Gleeson was a farmer and a business man, farming and trying his hand at sawmilling, then at the tavern business. A business associate convinced him to purchase the property located at Lock 38 as an investment, speculating on the potential of the new Ohio & Erie Canal. Moses Gleeson bought the structure on the canal, then added to it to open it as both a tavern and a store. Eventually hard times found that tavern, and the building became a store, a residence, and a blacksmith shop, among other uses. The Gleeson family remained prominent in the area and in Bedford and in time Americanized the name to Gleason.
Hunter founded the esteemed Phillis Wheatley Association of Cleveland in 1911. This began as a “Black YWCA” providing safe housing, job training, and recreation for young Black women arriving from the South. Over her long career, she became a nationally known advocate for civil rights.
At the Harriet Keeler Memorial in Brecksville Reservation, the bronze plaque reads: “Teacher – Author – Citizen: She liveth in the continuing generation of the woods she loved.” Following her death in 1921, mourners worked together to preserve over 300 acres of parkland in her honor. It remains a remarkable testament to a remarkable life. Even today, public monuments to a professional woman are rare. Keeler was a Cleveland educator, botanist, author, suffragist.
In November 1967, Carl B. Stokes was featured on the cover of Time when he became the first African American mayor of a major city. He played important roles in the civil rights and environmental movements of that period.
The Delgados, a Mexican-American family from Independence, Ohio, lived along the Cuyahoga River from about 1935-1962. Father Erasto worked for the B&O Railroad.
Gayle Hazelwood began her 35-year career with the National Park Service at what was then Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation Area. In a 2022 oral history, she recalls her childhood influences, longtime friendships, and career path to leadership positions. Many places she worked focus on outreach to urban communities and Black history.
Peg Bobel has advocated for Cuyahoga Valley since the 1970s. As a Sierra Club leader, she was involved in park establishment, cleanup of the Beaver Marsh, and trail planning. As the executive director of Cuyahoga Valley Association, she supported the early cultural arts and Junior Ranger programs as well as the establishment of Cuyahoga Valley Environmental Education Center. As an author and a citizen scientist, Peg has helped people to understand and enjoy Cuyahoga Valley.
Elaine Marsh’s career as an Ohio environmental activist spans a half century, from the 1970s to the 2020s. She is widely regarded as the voice of the Cuyahoga River.
The son of a slave and a free black woman, John Malvin was born free because children assumed the status of their mother. In 1802, John Malvin was bound to his father’s owner where he learned carpentry, and to read and write. After a previous attempt to escape failed, John Malvin left Virginia for Ohio in 1827. In 1831, he and his wife Harriet Dorsey settled in Cleveland. Read his story.
