Dugway Brook Watershed

The Dugway Brook Watershed is a nine-square mile basin in Cleveland, Ohio and its east side suburbs, draining storm runoff into Dugway Brook and feeding into Lake Erie. Dugway Brook is one of the five “bluestone brooks” of Cuyahoga County, also including Dean Brook, Euclid Creek, Nine-Mile Creek, and Doan Brook,^[1] and their watersheds emptying into Lake Erie.

Along with the other bluestone brooks, the east and west branches of Dugway Brook were formed about 14,000 years ago^[2] during the last glacial period, near the end of the Wisconsin glaciation, and originated in what is now University Heights, descending and meandering roughly parallel in a northwesterly direction, then passing through Cleveland Heights, East Cleveland, and the City of Cleveland, where the two branches merge at a point just south of what is now Interstate 90. Dugway Brook then cuts northerly through the shoreline suburb of Bratenahl as a single watercourse, finally discharging into Lake Erie.^[3]

Dugway Brook is now an almost entirely enclosed culverted watercourse,^[4] running in its natural channel under and alongside streets and city parks built around it. The brook appears to have been culverted over a century ago, 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.^[5] 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, while less than 5% involves Bratenahl, Shaker Heights and South Euclid combined.^[6] A portion of Dugway Brook’s content is overflow from sanitary sewer lines and illicit discharge.^[7]

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, 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.^[8]

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.^[9] 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).^[10] With the cemetery’s contribution of 10 acres (40,000 m²) 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.^[11]

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,^[12] and passing under and openly cutting through what is now Forest Hill Park, once the summer estate of John D. Rockefeller.^[13][14][15] 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.^[16]

Notes

1. ^ Larick, Dr. Roy, “The Bluestone Brooks: Heart of the Eastern Inner Ring Landscape - A Natural and Historical Exploration,” [1], retrieved on August 16, 2008.
2. ^ Larick, Dr. Roy, “The Bluestone Brooks: Heart of the Eastern Inner Ring Landscape - A Natural and Historical Exploration,” [2], retrieved on August 16, 2008.
3. ^ Beach, David, “Dugway Brook,” [3] (June 13, 2007), retrieved on August 16, 2008.
4. ^ Beach, David, “Dugway Brook,” [4] (June 13, 2007), retrieved on August 16, 2008.
5. ^ State of Ohio, “Executive Documents: Annual Reports for 1914 Made to the Eighty-First General Assembly, Regular Session of the State of Ohio, Part III,” [5], retrieved on August 16, 2008.
6. ^ Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District, “Dugway Brook Watershed Fact Sheet,” [6], retrieved on August 16, 2008.
7. ^ City of Cleveland Heights, Ohio, “The Storm Water Management Program for Cleveland Heights,” [7], retrieved on August 16, 2008.
8. ^ 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, [8], retrieved on August 22, 2008.
9. ^ Morton, Marian, Cleveland’s Lake View Cemetery, Arcadia Publishing (2004), pp. 90-91.
10. ^ Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District website, [9], retrieved on August 23, 2008.
11. ^ Morton, Marian, Cleveland’s Lake View Cemetery, Arcadia Publishing (2004), pp. 90-91.
12. ^ Beach, David, “Dugway Brook,” [10] (June 13, 2007), retrieved on August 16, 2008.
13. ^ City of Cleveland Heights, Ohio, “The Storm Water Management Program for Cleveland Heights,” [11], retrieved on August 16, 2008.
14. ^ City of Cleveland Heights, Ohio, “Preserving Our Park...Upper Dugway Valley Riparian Corridor,”[12], retrieved on August 16, 2008.
15. ^ Cleveland Heights Historical Society, “Forest Hill Park,” [13], retrieved on August 16, 2008.
16. ^ 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, [14], retrieved on August 22, 2008.