Whiskey Island is a peninsula at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River at

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 h ...

Cleveland 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. ...

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

. Its current configuration was created in 1827 when the river's mouth was moved to its present location. Part of the city's Cuyahoga Valley neighborhood, the peninsula is long and at its widest, bounded by Lake Erie to the north, West 54th Street on the west (roughly), and the Cuyahoga River to the south and east. The western half of Whiskey Island is occupied by the Cleveland Bulk Terminal. The eastern section is home to a marina and

public park An urban park or metropolitan park, also known as a municipal park (North America) or a public park, public open space, or municipal gardens ( UK), is a park in cities and other incorporated places that offer recreation and green space to r ...

, known as Wendy Park, which forms part the Lakefront Reservation of the

Cleveland Metroparks Cleveland Metroparks is an extensive system of nature preserves in Greater Cleveland, Ohio. Eighteen reservations, which largely encircle the city of Cleveland, follow along the shore of Lake Erie and the rivers and creeks that flow through the ...

History

19th century

Whiskey Island was the first piece of solid land amid the swamps lining the river one-quarter mile down the Cuyahoga when

Moses Cleaveland Moses Cleaveland (January 29, 1754 – November 16, 1806) was an American lawyer, politician, soldier, and surveyor from Connecticut who founded the city of Cleveland, Ohio, while surveying the Connecticut Western Reserve in 1796. During the Ame ...

visited the area in 1796.

Lorenzo Carter Major Lorenzo Carter was the first permanent settler in Cleveland, Ohio, United States. Born in 1767, Carter spent his early years in Warren, Connecticut, where he visited the local library frequently and developed an appreciation of books. ...

built his family farm on Whiskey Island, which got its name after a distillery was built on the site in the 1830s. The area was settled, largely by

Irish immigrants The Irish diaspora ( ga, Diaspóra na nGael) refers to ethnic Irish people and their descendants who live outside the island of Ireland. The phenomenon of migration from Ireland is recorded since the Early Middle Ages,Flechner and Meeder, The ...

, when the

Ohio and Erie Canal The Ohio and Erie Canal was a canal constructed during the 1820s and early 1830s in Ohio. It connected Akron with the Cuyahoga River near its outlet on Lake Erie in Cleveland, and a few years later, with the Ohio River near Portsmouth. It also ...

was constructed in 1825 and the river was rechanneled in 1827. In 1831 the Buffalo Co. and the New Harbor Co., representing investors from Buffalo and Brooklyn, purchased the Carter farm and divided its into allotments along 22 streets. Manufacturing plants and docks were constructed. The Lake Erie Iron Works made steamboat shafts and railroad axles on the island and thirteen saloons were located in the area. Cleveland's second hospital, the "pest house," was built on Whiskey Island following the Cholera epidemic of 1832. The Cleveland and Toledo Railroad (later the New York Central) ran its northern division through Whiskey Island "stopping at the river to ferry its passengers across the Cuyahoga because the city refused permission for the railroad to connect to the eastbound line".

20th century

The Irish moved from Whiskey Island when better employment and housing opportunities became available and except for a Depression-era

Hooverville A "Hooverville" was a shanty town built during the Great Depression by the homeless in the United States. They were named after Herbert Hoover, who was President of the United States during the onset of the Depression and was widely blamed for it. ...

, Whiskey Island was left largely to the railroads, a

salt mine Salt mining extracts natural salt deposits from underground. The mined salt is usually in the form of halite (commonly known as rock salt), and extracted from evaporite formations. History Before the advent of the modern internal combustio ...

owned by Cargill, and the set of four large

Hulett The Hulett was an ore unloader that was widely used on the Great Lakes of North America. It was unsuited to tidewater ports because it could not adjust for rising and falling tides, although one was used in New York City. History The Hulett was i ...

ore unloaders at the Pennsylvania Railway Ore Dock, which when built in 1911 was the largest ore-unloading dock on the Great Lakes. The Huletts were dismantled by the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority in 2000 to create room for additional bulk storage. Two of the Hullets were scrapped, and the other two were disassembled and remain on the site. The

Coast Guard A coast guard or coastguard is a maritime security organization of a particular country. The term embraces wide range of responsibilities in different countries, from being a heavily armed military force with customs and security duties to ...

built its Cleveland station at the end of a pier north of Whiskey Island. A second station, designed by architect J. Milton Dyer, opened in 1940. The Coast Guard operated at the site until 1976, when they relocated the search and rescue station to new facilities at the Coast Guard moorings on East Ninth Street. The old station has sat unused since then, except for a brief period in the early 1990s when it served as a nightclub. The City of Cleveland purchased the station for $1 in 2003, and is developing plans for its restoration and reuse.

21st century

In the early 2000s, the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority pursued the purchase of the eastern portion of Whiskey Island in order to expand port facilities; however, the port did not buy the land. The open space and marina were purchased by Cuyahoga County in 2004 and preserved as a public park. The area's protection was due in large part to the efforts of activist Ed Hauser, known as the "Mayor of Whiskey Island". Wendy Park at Whiskey Island opened to the public in 2005, and includes

sand volleyball Beach volleyball is a team sport played by two teams of two or more players on a sand court divided by a net. Similar to indoor volleyball, the objective of the game is to send the ball over the net and to ground it on the opponent's side of the ...

courts, a prairie garden, and a restaurant-bar. In 2014, Whiskey Island was purchased by the Cleveland Metroparks. About 7,000 people visited Wendy Park in 2005. The number rose to more than 180,000 in 2010.

References

External links

Whiskey Island MarinaWendy Park FoundationWendy Park, Lakefront Reservation, Cleveland Metroparks
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Historic American Engineering Record Heritage Documentation Programs (HDP) is a division of the U.S. National Park Service (NPS) responsible for administering the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), Historic American Engineering Record (HAER), and Historic American Landscapes ...