Since 2013 Cleveland’s lakefront parks have been run by the Cleveland Metroparks. Before the Metroparks assumed administration of the parks, the state of Ohio operated them as units of the Cleveland Lakefront State Park, and before that the city of Cleveland’s Board of Park Commissioners controlled these parks. It was a long road of pollution and vandalism that led to Metroparks control over the lakefront parks. Each previous administration started out with a good budget and short-term plans for the lakefront parks, but long-term maintenance issues ultimately undermined each administration’s stewardship of the parks.

The urban park movement came rather late to Cleveland, emerging in September 1865 when a city council committee was appointed to consider the establishment of public parks. Finally, after new state laws were enacted, in 1871 Cleveland’s Board of Park Commissioners was created. In 1874 the park board began selling park bonds to finance land acquisition and improvements to create several parks, including Lake View Park. This park stood on the natural bluff overlooking the Lake Erie until Municipal Stadium (later replaced by today’s FirstEnergy Stadium)—built on fill that extended the lakeshore northward—blocked the view. Cleveland’s parks started to take shape over the next ten years through various donations, but they lacked in comparison to park development in other cities with populations similar to Cleveland’s, and with growing urbanization it seemed that the city was running out of land to set aside for parks. Various state legislation led to an increase in park power, and by 1900 Cleveland would gain ten new parks totaling over 1,200 acres, approximately two thirds of which had been donated. Finally a good amount of Cleveland’s lakefront had been saved for parks and conservation in Edgewater Park, Gordon Park, and Lake View Park.

With so much newly acquired land, the park system started to struggle with the biggest problem that would plague the lakefront. Even the bonds the park commissioners sold could only be used to purchase new lands, not maintain them. Through the first twenty years of the 1900s, multiple public works projects were completed to appease the residents who claimed the city only opened parks away from the urban center. Cleveland’s combined storm water sewage system was also being completed at this time and the water treatment plants sat basically at the edge of Edgewater Park and Gordon Park. On most days the water treatment plant could do its job but with heavy rain, Cleveland’s sewers combined storm water and sewage, dumping the sludge into Lake Erie.

As in other cities, Cleveland’s parks would serve as a major focus for WPA workers during the Great Depression, but as people left for World War II, vandalism struck the lakefront parks. Continually the parks’ budget got smaller and smaller, not to mention that the Memorial Shoreway sliced through most of the lakefront parks by the 1950s. A series of Cuyahoga River fires culminated in national attention to Cleveland’s growing water pollution problem by 1969. Although the federal government passed the Clean Water Act of 1972, leading to gradual improvements in water quality, little progress was made in curbing the pollution problem in the lakefront parks. No longer able to keep up its coveted park system Cleveland was once so proud of, the city signed a long-term lease with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, making Edgewater, Gordon, and Wildwood Parks part of a new Cleveland Lakefront State Park.

The new state park lasted until 2013. The state put together a 100-year plan for the state of the Lakefront Park in 1984, implementing facilities for fishing, boating, swimming, and picnicking and day-use facilities at all designated park areas, but it was only loosely followed over the ensuing years. The main area of attention was cleaning the polluted waters and lakefront which had become a virtual dumping ground. The lakefront continued to change when newly elected mayor Michael White proposed several different projects two years before Cleveland’s bicentennial in 1996. The plan, dubbed North Coast Harbor, included a new science center, an aquarium, and many improvements to the port included a new Regional Transit Authority (RTA) waterfront rapid line. The plan, totaling more than $285 million, promised to make the Cleveland Lakefront State Park Ohio’s most visited state park.

Although the plan was only partially realized, the lakefront still saw heavy use and, unfortunately, slipping maintenance. As one city council member described in 2004, the parks had become overgrown, the beaches littered with debris, and public bathrooms in deplorable shape. The state simply did not have the funding after cuts, and residents started discussing giving control to the Cleveland Metroparks. Over the next decade it became clearer through the continued pollution that a change was direly needed. After the Clevleand Metroparks assumed stewardship of the parks from the state in 2013, the city gave the Metroparks $15 million for cleanup and upgrades. The Cleveland City Planning Commission, along with the Cleveland Metroparks, put out a waterfront district plan in 2014 to decide the future of the area. The best fit for the lakefront parks seems to be control by a dedicated parks organization committed to long-term conservation. Cleveland Metroparks has answered the call.

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Cleveland's Memorial Shoreway (I-90) bisects Gordon Park near the mouth of Doan Brook. To the north of the Cleveland Metroparks Lakefront Reservation field office on Lakeshore Boulevard lies Dike 14, now known as the Cleveland Lakefront Nature Preserve. The space is officially designated as "a confined disposal facility," or CDF, for dredge spoils. Dredging involves removing sediments that build up on the bottom of a riverbed to maintain a navigable channel. Prior to the Clean Water Act of 1972 the dredge spoils from the Cuyahoga River were put in the open lake or along the shoreline to create new land. Between 1979 and 1999, the US Army Corps of Engineers, under contract with the Cuyahoga County Port Authority and the City of Cleveland, filled the space with dredging material from the Cuyahoga River. Dike 14 stands 39 feet high, has a 5,400-foot perimeter, and occupies 88 acres. It is one of a series of confined disposal facilities in Lake Erie along Cleveland's shoreline, but it is no ordinary CDF. Since 1999, Dike 14 has been naturally reforesting.

During the first half of the twentieth century, the city used much of the area just east of Gordon Park as a garbage dump. As many as 1,000 trucks brought their tattered loads of rubbish to the dump each day for incineration. At the same time, industrial wastes were routinely secreted into the Cuyahoga River, adding to its demise and ultimate 'death'. The accumulation of years of pollutants branded the river the most polluted river in the United States. The river required cleanup, including removal of sediment from its bed.

The eastward extension of the Memorial Shoreway in the 1950s divided Gordon Park. The park fell into neglect and adjacent land became used as a landfill by the city. In 1962, two sixty-year-old freighters, the James S. Hill and the William Edenborn of the U.S. Steel fleet, were sunk offshore to protect against beach erosion. In 1965 the city announced plans to utilize the site for a landfill to expand the park. Two years later the city began to dump junked cars and other refuse at the site. By March 1969, the Cleveland Press reported that more than 8,000 cars along with other rubble had been dumped at the landfill. However, the city was criticized for its poor handling of the site allowing pollutants to escape into the lake. On May 18, 1971, the Cleveland Press reported that the planned fishing pier would likely "remain a crooked finger of barren land in the lake."

Meanwhile, several organizations and agencies were seeking efficient, effective, and environmentally safe solutions to urban industrial challenges. In 1975, a proposal by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers drafted a plan to utilize the landfill space adjacent to Gordon Park as "Diked disposal facility site number 14." The report detailed a plan to construct a retaining wall around the space that contains the freighters, junk, and fill (about eight acres) and enlarge the walled space in the lake to include another 80 acres to deposit river dredged material in a safe manner that would not threaten the lake with its pollutants. The proposal was approved with little opposition, except from the neighboring Bratenahl City Council. In 1979, work began on a breakwall, a retaining culvert for Doan Brook, and rubble mound walls for the dike. The final fill occurred in 1999, twenty years after filling began. Dike 14 presently holds about 5.66 million cubic yards of consolidated dredge material.

All of the vegetation and wildlife now present has occurred naturally, including more than 280 species of birds and several varieties of butterflies. Revitalization of the area occurred after the last fill deposit without human intervention (planting, seeding, or stocking). However, some grooming activity has enhanced the site for birding walks. Dike 14 is held under public trust by the State of Ohio, and is currently under lease to Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority. The Cleveland Lakefront Nature Preserve formally opened to the public on a daily basis in February 2012.

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Edgewater Park makes up the western-most grounds of the Cleveland Lakefront State Park. Running between the Memorial Shoreway and Lake Erie just to the west of downtown Cleveland, the park encompasses over 130 acres of land and overlooks 6,000 feet of shoreline. The park is divided into upper and lower levels, which are connected by a paved pathway.

The grounds for Edgewater Park were purchased by the City of Cleveland in 1894 and have provided popular recreational spaces for Cleveland residents since its opening the following year. Since the second half of the 20th century, however, Cleveland's park department was faced with juggling depleting resources and the problems of general upkeep, pollution, and security for the public grounds. Unable to maintain its park lands, the City of Cleveland leased Edgewater Park to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources for fifty years in 1978. While maintaining its identity as Edgewater Park, the park is now joined along with five other public spaces to make up the Cleveland Lakefront State Park.

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