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michael ceraolo Whose coastline Cleaveland crawled his canoe across was not always, and will not always be, though today it’s easy to forget that fact as you scan the shoreline and see in the cloud-shrouded distance that the high-priced high-rise condos are just bumps on the horizon, while nearer in the distance the downtown skyscrapers seem to be trying to penetrate the sky, and whitecaps leap from the lake’s surface like marine animals, and the gray-green water greedily gobbles the shoreline and creates an ir r g e u l r a coastline that no human would ever dream of designing, and the endless erosion is ready to t o p p l e the man-made structures built too close to its
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One day, though rorces greater than either of these will make irrevocable, though not permament, changes, and the lake will be transformed into a river
The largest is not now in the form that Cleaveland found it –
The sculpture of the river that took many million years to complete was not good enough for man Improvements would have to be made (definition of improvement – a change in a part of nature made for the benefit of man) The river’s original mouth was further west than it is now and had a sandbar that could be walked across; the last patch of river before the mouth moseyed lazily almost parallel to Lake Erie; neither of these would do for man’s purposes And so began nearly two centuries of man-made changes:
In 1807-1808, improvements so the river could become part of a canal the length of Ohio were to be financed by means of a lottery (Current suckers note this: eighty-seven-and-a-half percent of all monies wagered were to be returned as prizes), though this means of fundraising was cancelled due to lack of interest After the initial fiasco there were many government-sponsored “improvements” too numerous to mention individually; the river was being constantly widened, new channels were being dug, bends were continually cut to accommodate the ever-increasing size of ships all to meet the incessant demands of the industries that sprang up on the river’s banks, industries that pissed in the river And still it wasn’t enough A local “booster” could write in 1940, even after all the changes already made, the river “should have received long ago treatment similar to that of a much-used street or highway characterized by marked deficiencies” The author of a book in the Rivers of America series could mention that the water was red and not even mention fire, for a fire in 1952 had caused $1.5 million in material damage, but none to the area’s psyche because it didn’t appear on America’s radar The damage from the next fire would be almost completely reversed –
After a few false starts the surveyors set about their appointed task The Reserve was the western border of the Eastern Woodlands ecosystem, and the commercial imperative combined with the biblical injunction to subdue the land necessitated the massacre of thousands of trees that stood in the way of an accurate survey mandated for the proper mapping of the ranges and townships and lots The work was hard The swamp-like pools of standing water were a problem The heat was a hindrance And the rain that came in sudden storms made a kind of music probably not appreciated at the time –
The lightning flashes across the audience, signalling the start of the program The rain raps rhythmically on the roof like the hiss of a shaken tambourine the wind whistles through the tree’s leaves The plash of puddles being driven through is an unidentifiable instrument And the cymbals of thunder clash at the crescendo of the concert –
Two months of these conditions combined with scanty rations made for unhappy campers Also, the surveyors had signed on for tours of duty of varying duration in Cleaveland’s commercial army But all work and no pay had created a condition ripe for a mutiny, and in the commercial army a mutiny is called a strike The spirit of solidarity and dissidence was born anew on the southern shore of Lake Erie
On September 21, 1796 fed up with not being fed adequately, the surveyors set sail for home After sailing eight miles east along the coast of Lake Erie, the men went ashore when they recognized others in the party who had arrived with provisions for them Temporarily appeased, the men set sail back from whence they came, and the resumption of their task But solidarity does not die so easily, and upon returning to the Cuyahoga they served notice to Cleaveland that they would leave for good unless they were given the opportunity to jointly purchase their own township Given little room to negotiate, on September 30, 1796 Cleaveland acceded to the surveyors’ demands, though he was able to extract some promises about how the new township would be developed The surveyors being mathematically minded, they named their new township Euclid after the father of geometry, and two of them returned the next year to settle in the area around Euclid Creek The strike won, their futures seemingly secure, after a brief resumption of the work the surveyors sailed for home on October 18, 1796 The aptly-named Job Stiles and Edward Paine, along with Stiles’ wife Tabitha, would remain for the winter along the banks of the Cuyahoga But it is doubtful, however, whether the three knew what they were in for, because winters along the northern shore of the Long Island Sound were nowhere near as severe as those along the southern shore of Lake Erie – |
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