The Dugway Brook Watershed is a nine-square mile basin in

Cleveland, Ohio Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

and its east side suburbs, which drains storm runoff into Dugway Brook which is a direct tributary feeding into

Lake Erie Lake Erie ( "eerie") is the fourth largest lake by surface area of the five Great Lakes in North America and the eleventh-largest globally. It is the southernmost, shallowest, and smallest by volume of the Great Lakes and therefore also has t ...

. Dugway Brook is one of the six greater "

bluestone Bluestone is a cultural or commercial name for a number of dimension or building stone varieties, including: * basalt in Victoria, Australia, and in New Zealand * dolerites in Tasmania, Australia; and in Britain (including Stonehenge) * felds ...

brooks" of

Cuyahoga County Cuyahoga County ( or ) is a large urban County (United States), county located in the Northeast Ohio, northeastern part of the U.S. state of Ohio. It is situated on the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the Canada–United States border, U.S.- ...

, also including Dean Brook,

Euclid Creek Euclid Creek is a long stream located in Cuyahoga and Lake counties in the state of Ohio in the United States. The long main branch runs from the Euclid Creek Reservation of the Cleveland Metroparks to Lake Erie. The west (also known as south) ...

, Nine-Mile Creek, Pepper Creek, Mill Creek and Doan Brook, and their watersheds which feed Lake Erie. All of the bluestone brooks, including Dugway Brook, are located in Bluestone Heights, a unique terrain area in Northeast Ohio's place between Appalachian Highlands and Central Lowlands. At the Bluestone Heights geographic center, Lyman Circle in Shaker Heights, is the singular source point for the six greater bluestone brooks.

History

Along with the other bluestone brooks, the east and west branches of Dugway Brook were formed about 14,000 years ago during the last glacial period, near the end of the

Wisconsin glaciation The Wisconsin Glacial Episode, also called the Wisconsin glaciation, was the most recent glacial period of the North American ice sheet complex. This advance included the Cordilleran Ice Sheet, which nucleated in the northern North American Cor ...

. Both branches rose on or near the campus of

John Carroll University John Carroll University is a private Jesuit university in University Heights, Ohio. It is primarily an undergraduate, liberal arts institution accompanied by the John M. and Mary Jo Boler College of Business. John Carroll has an enrollment of 3, ...

in southeastern University Heights, descending and meandering roughly parallel in a northwesterly direction, then passing through

Cleveland Heights Cleveland Heights is a city in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, United States, and one of Cleveland's historical streetcar suburbs. The city's population was 45,312 at the 2020 census. As of the 2010 census, Cleveland Heights was ranked the 8th largest ...

, East Cleveland, and the City of Cleveland, where the two branches merge at a point just south of what is now

Interstate 90 Interstate 90 (I-90) is an east–west transcontinental freeway and the longest Interstate Highway in the United States at . It begins in Seattle, Washington, and travels through the Pacific Northwest, Mountain West, Great Plains, Midwest, and ...

. Dugway Brook then cuts northerly through the shoreline suburb of

Bratenahl Bratenahl ( ) is a village in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, United States, on the southern shore of Lake Erie. One of Cleveland's oldest streetcar suburbs, it is bordered by the city on three sides and by the Lake Erie shoreline to the north. The populat ...

as a single watercourse, and finally discharges into Lake Erie. Dugway Brook is now an almost entirely enclosed

culvert A culvert is a structure that channels water past an obstacle or to a subterranean waterway. Typically embedded so as to be surrounded by soil, a culvert may be made from a pipe, reinforced concrete or other material. In the United Kingdom ...

ed watercourse, running in its natural channel under and alongside streets and city parks built around it. The brook appears to have been culverted early in the 20th century, partly because of the nuisance of septic contamination to nearby residents. This contamination became a concern of the Ohio State Board of Health, which in 1914 ordered the City of Cleveland to improve the sewer system involved by 1916, before the upstream suburbs experienced dense development. Culverting also maximized the development potential of surrounding land. About 94% of the watershed is now developed, with mostly mid-density housing. Approximately 45% of the watershed is in Cleveland Heights with 13% in University Heights, while less than 5% involves Bratenahl,

Shaker Heights Shaker or Shakers may refer to: Religious groups * Shakers, a historically significant Christian sect * Indian Shakers, a smaller Christian denomination Objects and instruments * Shaker (musical instrument), an indirect struck idiophone * Cockta ...

and

South Euclid South Euclid is a city in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, United States. It is an inner-ring suburb of Cleveland located on the city's east side. As of the 2010 census the population was 22,295. Geography Acting approximately as a central point for the ...

combined. A portion of Dugway Brook's content is overflow from sanitary sewer lines and illicit discharge. The City of Cleveland Heights has taken steps to keep the watershed's infrastructure clean and to reduce illicit discharge.

West branch

Meadowbrook Boulevard in University Heights and Cleveland Heights follows the winding course of the upper west branch, having been built on top of its culvert at the bottom of the stream valley. The west branch of Dugway Brook passes through Cleveland Heights as an open channel at several points within a mile south of and inside historic

Lake View Cemetery Lake View Cemetery is a privately owned, nonprofit garden cemetery located in the cities of Cleveland, Cleveland Heights, and East Cleveland in the U.S. state of Ohio. Founded in 1869, the cemetery was favored by wealthy families during the Gil ...

, founded in 1869. The cemetery quarried Euclid bluestone, a desirable, dense, finely grained and easily cut variety of sandstone, from the part of the brook situated in Cleveland Heights. Bluestone from the cemetery quarry was used to construct buildings in the cemetery, a massive wall on the western (Mayfield Road) side of the cemetery, steps leading to the tops of small hills, and other structures. Quarrymen worked with picks, iron bars, and other hand tools, and used dynamite. Little stone was wasted; at least during part of the twentieth century, a stone crusher, positioned on a basal layer of stone flooring the quarry, was used to crush scraps to be used as foundations for cemetery monuments. The quarry here was active until the mid-1930s. Lakeview Cemetery Dam (28885167152)

In 1975, trustees of Lake View Cemetery sued the cities of University Heights and Cleveland Heights to stop their sewer expansions upstream to the south, anticipating worsening of the flooding of the west branch caused by heavy rains. The Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas had recently ordered the creation of the Cleveland Regional Sewer District (now the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District). With the cemetery’s contribution of of its land, the District constructed the massive concrete Lake View Cemetery Flood Control Dam in 1978 at an initial cost of $6,300,000.00, in spite of public criticism that the scope and cost of this solution far exceeded the severity of the problem. At the time of its completion, it was the largest concrete dam located east of the

Mississippi River The Mississippi River is the second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson Bay drainage system. From its traditional source of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it f ...

East branch

The east branch of Dugway Brook is visible from Cedar Road in University Heights as a short open channel, before passing under Cain Park, Cumberland Park, and passing under and openly cutting through what is now Forest Hill Park, once the summer estate of

John D. Rockefeller John Davison Rockefeller Sr. (July 8, 1839 – May 23, 1937) was an American business magnate and philanthropist. He has been widely considered the wealthiest American of all time and the richest person in modern history. Rockefeller was ...

. Rockefeller also quarried parts of Dugway Brook for the Euclid bluestone he used to construct some of the small bridges and other structures on Forest Hill.Hannibal, J. T., Scherzer, B. A., and Saja, D. B., 2007, The Euclid Bluestone of northeastern Ohio--Quarrying history, petrology, and sedimentology, in Shaffer, N. R., and DeChurch, D. A., eds., Proceedings of the 40th Forum on the Geology of Industrial Minerals, May 2–7, 2004, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana Geological Survey Occasional Paper 67, p. 70-81

retrieved on August 22, 2008.

Notes

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History

West branch

East branch

Notes

Further reading