Cascade Locks
The Cascade Locks became the site of the city’s first industrial valley. The same topography that presented an obstacle for the canal builders provided waterpower for a string of industries that soon lined the canal. This new village, founded by Dr. Eliakim Crosby (with help from Simon Perkins), was called “Cascade” (later “North Akron”).
Unlike the “lock mills” that had already begun grinding flour north of Akron using the relatively modest drop of six to ten feet of canal water to turn their millstones, the industries in the Cascade valley had a more powerful source of waterpower. Parallel to the canal, as we walk along the towpath trail, we can see remains of the shallow ditch that was the Cascade Race. It was this separate mill race which turned the water wheels of several flour mills, a woolen mill, a furniture factory, five iron furnaces, a distillery, and other early Akron industries. Basins, those wide pools we see in the canal between the locks, provided “parking lots” for canal boats that lined up to haul away the products of these enterprises.
The source of canal water was (and still is) the Portage Lakes. Water from these reservoirs enters the canal opposite Young’s Tavern on Manchester Road. Here the water can sometimes be seen dividing and actually flowing both ways. But the source of water for Akron’s industrial valley parallel to the canal was a dam on the Little Cuyahoga River in the village of Middlebury, near today’s Goodyear’s headquarters. Dr. Crosby built this dam to create a mill race to power his Old Stone Mill at Lock 5 at the end of Mill Street. The mill was on the site of the hotel in today’s Cascade Plaza. Completed in 1832 with four French burrstones to grind wheat into flour, it was finest grist mill in Ohio.
Water backed up by the Middlebury dam ran as a mill race down “Crosby’s Ditch,” for nearly two miles along the Little Cuyahoga Valley, turning south at Main Street, then west on Mill Street to enter Crosby’s mill. A decade later, the mill race down the middle of Main Street would be enlarged to become part of the Pennsylvania & Ohio Canal. The expanded ditch would be extended south on Main Street to merge with the Ohio & Erie in a basin at Lock One. But Crosby still got to use some of the water to run his mill, diverting it from the P & O down Mill Street.
Eliakim Crosby's Old Stone Mill at the foot of Mill Street, at Lock 5
After turning the machinery in Crosby’s mill, the effluent water exiting his mill flowed in a race along the east side of the canal in Akron, then plunged down the steep slope as the continuing Cascade Race, sequentially powering all the industries in the valley as the same water flowed through one factory, then into the next one, and on into the next—all by gravity. Opposite Lock 14, the race can be seen entering a 558-foot brick tunnel under North Street, emerging just north of the building owned by Abtec (originally the site of Schumacher’s German Mill, later that of Swinehart Rubber), flowing back into the same Little Cuyahoga River from which the water had been diverted upstream.
The Cascade Race disappears in a 558-foot brick tunnel under North Street and under the Abtec Building (on the site of Schumacher's early German Mill.
South of this confluence, just below Lock 15 (where today the canal also enters the river) was a basin. Canal boats from Cleveland often tied up here overnight, and their personnel frequently shopped at the Mustill Store, which fronts on the west side of Lock 15. The Mustill Store and House, buildings that date from the late 1840s (or early 1950s), are the showpieces of Cascade Locks Park. These buildings have been rehabilitated to their original form by a unique partnership comprised of the City of Akron, the Cascade Locks Park Association, Metro Parks, Serving Summit County, and the National Park Service. The interior of the store has become a museum featuring photos and artifacts of Cascade Locks during the height of the canal era.
The restored Mustill Store
Mustill's Store in the late 1860s
Schoolchildren visiting the restored Mustill Store listen to "Fred and Emma Mustill," played by Rosemary Reymann and Bill Van Nostran, volunteers of Cascade Locks Park Association. The store interior is now a museum created by the National Park Service and operated by the Cascade Locks Park Association.
Typical of all of the locks in Cascade Locks Park, Lock 15 has deteriorated substantially since its construction in 1826-7. It has also undergone intended “improvements.” In the 1907 photo of Mustill’s store we see new gates in place, and the fresh results of an effort at waterproofing. Most locks leaked, and the leakage got worse with time as the mortar disintegrated between the lock stones.
By the end of the 19th century, the only common freight traffic on the Ohio & Erie was coal for the boilers of Lake Erie steamboats. Nevertheless, there arose a movement to restore the canal for excursion trade; and in 1906 and 07 a contract was let to the Daley Brothers to accomplish the project. To preserve the 15-foot width of the channel, the Daley workers chipped back the sandstone blocks about a foot deep and then cast a heavy waterproofing barrier of concrete into this wall cavity. They also built many new gates—only to have their work destroyed half a dozen years later by the notorious flood of 1913. The concrete liner is mostly what we see today, but on some locks we can still see the original sandstone blocks.
Mustill Store and Lock 15 in 1907 after restoration of Lock 15
Walking south on the path from Mustill Store and crossing North Street to the sidewalk on the south side of the street, from the middle of bridge over the canal we can see why these are called the “Cascade Locks.”
Looking upstream from Lock 14
Each lock had a "wasteway" or "bypass channel" to detour excess water around the lock during periods of less than peak traffic.
A few feet farther east are the overgrown ruins of Lock 14’s “wasteway” or “bypass channel.” Every lock had one of these “detours” for the water around the lock, so that during times of less than peak traffic, the water level wouldn’t get so high that it flowed over top of the gates—or, worse, be washed out during a storm.