Cultural Landscape Report, Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation Area
Hamilton C, Adelman E, Elkinton S. 1987. Cultural Landscape Report, Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation Area. Cultural Landscape Report. U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service
The preservation of the historic and scenic values of the Cuyahoga River and adjacent lands of the Cuyahoga Valley is one of the principal purposes of Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation Area. This unit of the National Park System includes approximately 32,000 acres of land between Cleveland and Akron, Ohio. Although surrounded by substantial residential development along its sides and by intensive industrial and urban areas at its ends, the Cuyahoga Valley has retained, to a remarkable degree, its rural agricultural qualities of over a century ago. This report was developed to identify the cultural landscape of the recreation area and to recommend methods of protecting this important historic and scenic value of the Cuyahoga Valley. At Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation Area, the following six primary themes establish the parameters for evaluating its cultural landscape: prehistory, settlement, transportation, agriculture, industry, and recreation. A number of archeological sites and many more historic structures have been previously documented in the recreation area. This report takes a larger look at the land which supported these pre-contact and historic sites and at the ways in which previous human actions have affected the spaces between these sites. The recommendations contained in this report address the preservation of these sites and their associated land. The preservation of former farm fields is of particular importance. Unlike historic structures, natural succession can take over an abandoned farm filled with brush in five years; partial canopy develops in fifteen years. In fifty years, a dense second-growth woods will develop. Since agriculture in the Cuyahoga Valley ceased being profitable on a wide scale in the 1930s, much of the nineteenth century farmscape is irretrievably lost; only remnant fields remain. These fields need to be carefully studied to determine which must be kept open to evoke the rural character for which the recreation area was intended to preserve. This report is intended primarily as a management tool; it is neither a research paper nor a plan. It seeks to explore policy and to present management alternatives, rather than to solve the potential endless list of site-specific problems associated with hundreds of historic properties in every type of condition. This report establishes objective comparisons of integrity and significance while presenting a range of management actions.
- Type
- Published Report
- Authors
- Hamilton, Chester; Adelman, Edward; Elkinton, Steve
- Date of Issue
- 1987-12
- Publisher
- U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service
- Units
- CUVA , MWR
- Keywords
- agriculture, barn, Clay, Cuyahoga River, Deciduous forest, earthwork, Farming, field patterns, Frazee house, golf courses, Greek Revival, Hale house, industry, land use patterns, Masonry, Ohio and Erie Canal, perched water table, prehistory, private carriage trails, recreation, rural agriculture, rural historic landscape, Sandstone, Scout camps, settlement, soil loss, steel truss bridge, transportation, Victorian, Western Reserve, wooded slopes
- Subjects
- CRIS-CL: 501012: Abraham Ulyatt House (123-19) , CRIS-CL: 500964: Brown/Bender Farm (121-62) , CRIS-CL: 500967: Conrad Botzum Farm (116-32) , CRIS-CL: 500977: Coonrad Farm (107-31) , CRIS-CL: 501373: Duffy Farm (115-35 & 115-36) , CRIS-CL: 500984: Edmund Gleason Farm , CRIS-CL: 500212: Everett Village , CRIS-CL: 501375: George Stanford (109-66,37,39,40,67,73) , CRIS-CL: 500961: Hammond-Cranz Farm (120-55) , CRIS-CL: 501202: Hrabak/Stebbens Farm (103-53) , CRIS-CL: 501383: Jaite Mill Historic District , CRIS-CL: 501381: James Wallace Farm/Brandywine Inn (107-89) , CRIS-CL: 500982: Lawson Waterman Farm (112-65) , CRIS-CL: 501005: Martha Hunt Farm (121-05) , CRIS-CL: 500974: Nathaniel Point Farm (114-62, 21) , CRIS-CL: 500987: Ohio and Erie Canal , CRIS-CL: 500973: Richard Vaughn Farm (106-02,03) , CRIS-CL: 500959: Robertson Farm (119-45) , CRIS-CL: 501384: Stephen Frazee Residence , CRIS-CL: 500936: Tilden Farm (108-03) , CRIS-CL: 500249: Valley Railway , CRIS-CL: 501388: Virginia Kendall Park , CRIS-CL: 975277: Welton Farm (112-65)