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    Cleveland's Flats
    Cleveland's Flats
    Cleveland's Flats
    Ebook186 pages48 minutes

    Cleveland's Flats

    By Matthew Lee Grabski

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    About this ebook

    Cleveland is home to many fascinating neighborhoods and districts. Perhaps the most intriguing, however, is an area known as the Flats. Typically, the term Flats refers to the northern portion of the Cuyahoga River Valley. The Cuyahoga River ceases to be the idyllic flow of water seen to the south of Cleveland as it approaches the city s steel mills. The river is more man-made than natural where it meets the Flats, and a wide array of industries sit along its banks. The Flats have been a vital component and a reflection of Cleveland s rise, decline, and ongoing renaissance. Cleveland s Flats is a chronicle of this remarkable region. From the refineries of Standard Oil to massive ore boats carefully navigating the Cuyahoga, Cleveland s Flats treats the reader to scenes found in no other place.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateMar 15, 2006
    ISBN9781439616741
    Cleveland's Flats
    Author

    Matthew Lee Grabski

    Matthew Lee Grabski, a local historian with a fondness for the Flats, has a special tie to the area. In the 1860s, his great-great grandfather Richard Clark joined his brothers James and Maurice in an oil refining venture in the Flats with a young man by the name of John D. Rockefeller.

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      Book preview

      Cleveland's Flats - Matthew Lee Grabski

      Collections.)

      INTRODUCTION

      The Flats may be the most colorful region within Cleveland, Ohio. The names associated with the people and places of the Flats are unforgettable: Collision Bend, Whiskey Island, Sherwin-Williams, and Rockefeller. Additionally, the area has served as a representative for Cleveland as a whole. When the Flats does well, so does the city.

      Of course, times have not always been pleasant for Cleveland and its Flats. Booms and busts, windfalls and depressions have marked the area’s history, much like any other northern industrial city. But somehow, someway, Cleveland and its most unique district have survived.

      The Flats are actually where Cleveland begins. They served as the landing site for Moses Cleaveland and his party from Connecticut in 1796. Cleaveland came to the far reaches of the Western Reserve to find locations suitable for settlement. Cleaveland felt that, swampy conditions aside, the region along the Cuyahoga River would make a solid place for settlers from the east.

      Cleaveland did not hang around for long, however, allowing Lorenzo Carter to be the first true permanent white settler when he arrived in 1797. Others soon followed Carter and it would not be long until something resembling a village was formed. By the 1820s, however, most folks chose to set up housekeeping a bit further from the swamps of the Cuyahoga.

      Things really picked up for Cleveland and the Flats with the completion of the Ohio and Erie Canal in the 1830s. Goods and people found their way along the canal from Portsmouth in the south of the state all the way to Cleveland. And, with the city’s location on the southern shore of Lake Erie, Cleveland almost instantly became a booming port as goods could be transferred from canal boats to lake boats and back again.

      With the Civil War, Cleveland handled all matters of items to keep the Union Army fighting. Many a merchant made a decent profit while dealing with the federal government. Among this set was a young man named John D. Rockefeller who, along with his partner, an Englishman named Maurice Clark, operated a rather successful commission business along the Cuyahoga.

      Rockefeller and Clark also branched into the nascent oil refining business, which actually proved more profitable than trading bulk goods. Rockefeller and Clark would split in 1865, but both did quite well for themselves, especially Rockefeller.

      As oil refineries sprouted up along the Cuyahoga, another industry began to make itself know in the late 1800s: steel. Cleveland’s proximity to iron ore, coal, and limestone reserves made it an ideal location for steel production. In addition to steel and oil, one could also find paint and chemical plants and lumber yards as well as a number of other industrial concerns appearing in the Flats.

      By the early 20th century, Cleveland was a solid economic power. With cities such as Akron, Buffalo, and Chicago, Cleveland helped make up what was perhaps the greatest industrial region in the history of the world. The might of this region was one of the deciding factors in World War I as the United States helped equip its allies before joining the war itself in 1917.

      The 1920s saw continued prosperity in the Flats as businesses grew to unprecedented dimensions. One only needed to look at the number of new ships sailing the Cuyahoga (many over 600 feet long) to see that the area was doing very well.

      The good times did not last, however, and Cleveland, like most every other city in the country, fell hard in the Depression. Business slowed to a crawl in the Flats as the nation sank further and further into economic disaster. The call to war-time duty would rescue the Flats, however, as its industrial power became essential in the fight against the Axis.

      Economic success raged in the Flats on throughout the 1950s. With nothing but a high school diploma, a person could earn a good sum of money while working for an establishment like Republic Steel.

      The 1960s began where the 1950s left off, but change would be in the air. Slowly, very slowly, foreign competition began to make itself known. Also, many people were abandoning Cleveland for homes in the suburbs.

      While these factors may have been subtle, one thing was not—pollution. For decades, Clevelanders had allowed all types of waste products to fall into the Cuyahoga. The city’s residents had even grown accustomed to the occasional fire on the river when various unidentifiable slicks burst into flame. But it was becoming increasingly harder to live with or ignore the problem.

      A fire in the summer of 1969 caught the nation’s attention and city leaders suddenly picked up the pace to clean up the Cuyahoga. By this point however, pollution and an eroding job base had began to take their toll on the Flats. While steel was still made and ore boats still plied the river, the Flats simply looked tired throughout the 1970s.

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