The establishment of Trailside Museums grew from a previous informal collaboration between the Metropolitan Park Board and the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. In the summer of 1928, a coterie of brush-clearing Boy Scouts taking direction from the head of the museum's educational department, Edmund V. Cooke, blazed the park system's first instructional nature trail. Located seventeen miles from Public Square in the wilderness of Cleveland Metroparks North Chagrin Reservation, the pathway was three quarters of a mile long and situated between two main trails. Lined with signs and placards, the walk was designed to tell the stories of local flora and geological strata. The museum's experiment in "teaching nature painlessly" quickly found favor with park-goers, and three additional pathways were developed in the Cleveland Metroparks South Chagrin, Brecksville and Rocky River Reservations. | Source: Courtesy of Cleveland MetroparksDownload Original File
