Dugway Brook, one of several bluestone streams that flow into Lake Erie, is largely invisible today. Generations ago, Dugway's serpentine branches were covered up by streets, parking lots, and parks. Almost 50 percent of the watershed flows through Cleveland Heights, but all that is visible within the community are a 300-yard stretch bordering Euclid Heights Boulevard just east of Coventry School, a deep ravine in Forest Hill Park, and a secluded spit inside Lake View Cemetery. Altogether, nearly 95 percent of Dugway is culverted.
Dugway’s two branches begin in University Heights and South Euclid and cut through Cleveland Heights and East Cleveland before they merge in Cleveland's Glenville neighborhood and run north to a single outlet into Lake Erie in Bratenahl. The west branch begins near John Carroll University. Much of this branch runs through a giant culvert under Meadowbrook Boulevard to its intersection with Cedar Road east of St. Ann's Church. Two small segments of the brook can be seen between Coventry and Washington on Berkshire and East Overlook Roads. The west branch flows underground through the Coventry Village district before reappearing briefly in Lake View Cemetery.
The east branch begins in South Euclid running parallel to and north of Cedar Road. A small portion of this branch flows above ground to the north of Washington Boulevard east of South Taylor Road before disappearing beneath Cain Park. It reappears along the western edge of Cumberland Park to the north of Euclid Heights Boulevard and emerges briefly once again in Forest Hill Park.
Bluestone brooks were so named for the presence of bluish sandstone deposits along their banks. To the east of Dugway, the most visible example is Euclid Creek, the site of a large quarry whose sandstone was used to build everything from building faces and sidewalks to cemetery markers and mausoleums. In the 1930s, legions of Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) employees extracted untold tons of Euclid Creek sandstone.
Along Dugway Brook's scenic courses, visionaries chased dreams. In the 19th century John Peter Preyer carved orchards, vineyards, and cider and grist mills from the Dugway valley in the vicinity of what is now Cumberland Park. Although Preyer's Lake View Wine Farm gave way to early suburban residential development soon after the turn of the 20th century, Preyer's homestead on Superior Road, made of one-and-a-half-foot-thick, locally quarried stone walls, survives as the oldest house in Cleveland Heights and among the oldest in the former Western Reserve of Connecticut (as Northeast Ohio was known into the early 19th century).
Others who developed the Dugway Brook watershed included Orville A. Dean, who built a successful dairy business just northeast of the Preyer farm; John D. Rockefeller, whose Forest Hill summer estate straddled the east branch of the brook; architect Eric Mendelsohn, who designed the domed Park Synagogue on a site straddling a small tributary of the east branch; and Frank Cain, Cleveland Heights mayor who, in the 1930s, used WPA funding to culvert Dugway through Cain Park and spearhead development of an amphitheater.
East siders mostly forgot about the brook amid relentless suburban expansion. Cleveland Heights, 60,000 strong by 1960, was a mosaic of suburban neighborhoods and business districts. Heights High teens joined many others in the humming Cedar-Lee and Coventry areas. In both places the only evidence of Dugway Brook's branches was often the sound of rushing water heard through covered manholes in the streets. A two-mile greenbelt of parks (Cain, Cumberland, and Forest Hill) transformed Dugway’s east branch into ball fields, playgrounds, and other recreational facilities.
By the 1960s and 1970s, devastating floods in low-lying University Circle prompted new concerns about Dugway (and its neighbor to the south and west, Doan Brook). This led to the construction in Lake View Cemetery of what was the largest poured-concrete dam east of the Mississippi River up to its time. Completed in 1978 as the first project of the newly created Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District, the dam stands 90 feet high and spans some 500 feet. Today Dugway Brook suffers from years of neglect and pollution during storms. Many have begun to seek ways to resurrect this fragile yet important natural resource.
]]>Supported by a steel superstructure and faced with Euclid bluestone quarried nearby, Forest Hill Park Footbridge traverses Forest Hill Boulevard in East Cleveland on land that was once part of Standard Oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller's summer estate. Spanning 347 feet across a deep valley in the Dugway Brook watershed, the 48-foot-high pedestrian bridge was intended to nestle in the hilly landscape of the Heights (the westernmost foothills of the Appalachians) on Cleveland's east side.
Designed by Wilbur Watson and Associates in 1939 with consulting architects F. B. Walker and A. D. Taylor, Forest Hill Park Footbridge was built in 1939-40--the work of more than 1,000 men toiling for two years. The men were paid with Works Progress Administration funds as part of its plan to put unemployed Americans back to work on useful projects. Wilbur Watson was a nationally known civil engineer and bridge designer who also engineered the Lorain-Carnegie Bridge over the Cuyahoga River. Taylor, who planned Forest Hill Park for the Rockefellers, was president of the American Society of Landscape Architects and a protege of the Olmsted firm founded by Frederick Law Olmsted, the "father of landscape architecture" who co-designed New York's Central Park. Taylor's sensibilities are reflected in the picturesque bridge.
Over the years the bridge suffered from neglect. A wire fence "cage" to prevent pedestrian falls, marred its graceful span, while vandals broke and removed stones from its parapet. Park volunteers repaired this damage in 2021, helping to ensure that the footbridge remains a beautiful presence for park users.
]]>Before it became Cain Park, the ravine between Taylor and Lee roads was merely a wet, overgrown gully visited by only the most adventurous of hikers. In 1914, the Central Improvement Association of Cleveland Heights (then still a village) formed a committee to look into the possibility of turning the Dugway Brook ravine into a more formal public park. It was not until the 1930s, however, that Cain Park began to take shape.
Much of the credit for the development of Cain Park in the 1930s can be given to Dr. Dina Rees Evans, who taught drama and English at Cleveland Heights High School. In 1932 "Doc" Evans became the first person in the United States to receive a Ph.D. in theater. She was an adamant believer in the ability of drama education to have a positive effect on students. In the summer of 1934, the drama club she ran at Heights High, called the Heights Players, collaborated with the Civic Theater of Allied Arts (the city's adult stage group) to put on a production of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream." The show took place on a hastily assembled wooden stage at the foot of the sledding hill, along which spectators gathered. The production proved to be wildly successful and spurred the further development of Cain Park.
Frank Cain, for whom the park is named, served as Mayor of Cleveland Heights from 1914 to 1946. After witnessing the success of the 1934 production, Cain threw his support fully behind the construction of a 3,000-seat amphitheater in the park. Besides constructing the amphitheater, workers from the Great Depression-era Works Progress Administration (WPA) also helped drain the ravine which Cain Park is situated in, covering up and culverting the creek that ran through its center. Attractive landscaping, tennis courts, ball fields, and walking paths completed the transformation of the former "wild" land into a public park.
The amphitheater had its grand opening in August 1938 with the staging of "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Plays, operas, concerts, and other cultural events have been held at Cain Park ever since. Evans, meanwhile, continued to serve as managing director of Cain Park Theater until 1950. She attracted top-flight young talent to the theater company, including music director Jack Lee, producer Ross Hunter, and actors Hal Holbrook, Dom DeLuise, Carol Kane, Jack Weston and Pernell Roberts. Evans retired from teaching in 1958. The amphitheater was renamed in her honor in 1989.
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