The Quarry Rock Picnic Area in South Chagrin Reservation invites visitors to envision an era when small bands of pioneer men, women, and children forged a new life in the Western Reserve. Situated along the bank of the Chagrin River's Aurora Branch, the peaceful retreat masks a history of industry and commerce. The land that was once home to the town of Griffithsburg has been reclaimed by time and nature. While traces of the ghosted town have all but disappeared, clues to a hidden past lay quietly beneath the cover of hemlock and oak trees.

The lost town of Griffithsburg was born from the imagination of land speculators seeking to capitalize on opportunities offered by the Chagrin River. With the Aurora Branch dropping sixty feet from its upland headwaters in a series of rapids, the river offered drainage for agriculture and a potential source of waterpower. Previously known as Pleasant Hill, the area's first settlers of European descent dated back to around 1820 and were attracted by the region's potential as farmland. Between 1833 and 1834, General James Griffith along with a small group of investors from Portage County purchased 100 acres of land along the Aurora Branch of the river with ambitions to build a cotton mill. Although these plans were quickly discarded, Griffith moved forward in building his village in the woods. A business district was nestled within the sandstone cliffs and the Chagrin River, located down the hill from Solon Road. Homes were constructed near what is now Liberty Road along the river.

It was a time of land speculation in the Western Reserve. In the broadest of strokes: the territory was reserved by the State of Connecticut, sold to a syndicate to be known as the Connecticut Land Co., unscrupulously negotiated out of Native American hands, surveyed and laid out in small lots for sale. The opening of the Ohio and Erie Canal in 1827 expanded commercial opportunities and promoted economic growth in Cuyahoga County and its surrounds. Land was readily available; many invested in real estate with plans to develop their property and sell at a profit to future settlers. In an era of water and steam power, real estate along rivers and streams proved key to the construction of mills and factories.

One of the first orders of business for General Griffith, and for any new settlement in Ohio during the 1800s, was to construct a sawmill. Looking upstream at the Quarry Rock Picnic Area, its location is now marked only by remnants of a sandstone mill foundation and the small picturesque waterfall. A man-made wooden dam once stretched across the Chagrin's Aurora Branch. Built where the river level dropped to provide additional power, water was diverted through a channel at the highest point near the mill to a waterwheel and emptied back into the river. What are now the calming sounds of water reaching the confluence of sandstone and shale were once accompanied by the rhythmic, thunderous knocking sounds of a water-powered sawmill. As surrounding trees were cut to make way for homes, farms, and businesses, the mill repurposed them into construction materials.

Despite the setback of failed plans to build the cotton mill, Griffithsburg took shape by the mid 1830s. Seeking buyers of his property, General Griffith found an investor in the somewhat famous author and sailor Archibald Robbins. Robbins moved to the tiny town and constructed a building that acted as his home and store. Griffith, exerting his political influence, secured a United States Post Office to be located in Robbins' shop. With no other nearby post offices, residents from surrounding villages found it necessary to make their way into the inaccessible town.

For a brief time, Griffithsburg flourished. Up to twenty families lived in the community, and a survey of the land reflected stores, a blacksmith shop, a school, and a factory. The influx of people to the town's center would soon be diverted, however, as Chagrin Falls opened its own post office in 1838. Soon-after in 1840, Robbins relocated his store and post office to Solon. Both Chagrin Falls and Solon would grow exponentially during the 19th century, while the town of Griffithsburg atrophied into non-existence. Griffith would remain in his town until the early 1850s, when he disappeared from Cuyahoga County tax records.

While marking the beginning-of-the-end for Griffithsburg's commercial center, the quarrying industry remained strong through the end of the century. Of the many natural resources, one that surely caught the eye of Griffith and his cohorts was the abundance and accessibility of Berea sandstone along the Chagrin River. An increased demand for the resilient stone had recently emerged as its value as a high grade building material became evident during the construction of the Ohio and Erie Canal. The fine-grained Berea grit was discovered to make excellent whetstones, millstones, and grindstones. As industry in the region boomed, and cities and towns emerged across the Midwestern landscape, demand for quarried rock from along the Chagrin River grew. By the end of the 19th century, over eighty percent of all grindstones produced in the United States came from Ohio.

Evidence of the quarrying industry can still be seen in the uniform vertical scars etched into the exposed sandstone cliffs along the Aurora Branch of the Chagrin River. Accompanied by the serenity of South Chagrin Reservation, it is easy to lose sight of the brutal and dangerous work revealed by these simple markings. There was no easy way to quarry or transport giant cubicles of stone. Commercial quarries of the early 19th century relied on the simplest of tools; drills, blasting powder, sledge hammers, iron wedges, and rods. Holes were drilled into the stone along the desired breaking point, a small amount of explosive powder was inserted into the holes and detonated, and the stone was manually wrestled away from its ancient home. Systems of pulleys and levers assisted the movement of these burdensome cubes, which would eventually be transported by horse-drawn wagons. In Northeast Ohio, it was common for quarried rock to be tooled or cut into a round shape. These cast-off quarried materials still litter the gorge of the South Chagrin Reservation.

During the second half of the 19th century, the quarrying industry progressively became dependent on access to railroads. A branch line spur of the Chagrin Falls & Southern Railroad was built into the quarry around 1877. The tracks can still be faintly seen along the entrance to the Quarry Rock Picnic Area. While the quarrying industry continued to thrive, it was eventually consolidated and monopolized in Ohio by a few dominant companies by the turn of the century. The Griffithsburg quarry would be abandoned. The Cleveland Metropolitan Park Board took over the grounds by 1930, and began the long process of reforestation. As years progressed, evidence of the Griffithsburg's era of pioneers, commerce and industry faded away.

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Denison Park, which anchors the northeastern edge of Cleveland Heights just west of Euclid Creek, straddled one of the old Euclid bluestone quarries that dotted the landscape to the east of Cleveland. Nearby, a town called Bluestone appeared in Euclid Township in present-day South Euclid to serve several quarries, including that of Irish-born Duncan McFarland on Euclid Creek. Peopled by mostly by Irish and Italian immigrants, the town was a wide-open boomtown with a general store and saloon, not unlike western mining towns. Railway spurs opened to carry the heavy loads of stone to market. Euclid bluestone was used widely in the Cleveland area and in Detroit, Milwaukee, and Buffalo as flagstone for sidewalks, exterior steps, windowsills, and a host of other applications.

The boomtown atmosphere of the village of Bluestone settled down as the quarrying business slowed in the 1900s and 1910s, and by the 1920s the Cleveland Metropolitan Park Board transformed the largest of the quarries into a portion of the Euclid Creek Reservation. Bluestone quarrying never regained its former importance but did continue in limited form under the aegis of the WPA in the 1930s. The old Euclid City Hall, now the Cleveland-Style Polka Hall of Fame, is among the few reminders of that effort.

The northeastern section of Cleveland Heights, almost rural as late as the 1920s, began to fill with subdivisions, a process that accelerated as the last farmlands gave way to the bulldozers in the years after World War II, aided by the WPA-constructed Monticello Boulevard in the late 1930s. Impressive growth helped raise Cleveland Heights's population to around 60,000 by the early 1950s. In response to the need for convenient recreational facilities to relieve having to travel up to three miles to use the nearest city parks, in 1955, Denison Park opened on the site of one of the bluestone quarries that had been used for years thereafter as a city dump. Named for Cleveland Heights councilman Robert F. Denison, it added a swimming pool in 1968 to relieve overcrowded Cumberland Pool. In recent years, with populations trending downward, the pool closed.

The suburban development that followed the "bluestone rush" reflected its legacy. In the Noble-Monticello area of Cleveland Heights, Bluestone and Quarry roads were so named for their proximity to Nine Mile Creek on the western fringe of the Euclid Creek quarrying area. Today many slabs of bluestone remain intact on Cleveland Heights sidewalks, although many are nearing the end of their useful life due to damage from vehicles, freeze-and-thaw cycles, and erosion. The Bluestone condominium development on Mayfield Road also keeps the name alive.

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Until the late 1800s, looking down from atop Cedar Hill you would have seen little more than a countryside landscape divided by an unkempt dirt road. The hillside known as Cedar Glen hosted few travellers aside from farm wagons and, later, visitors to the springs resort at the foot of the hill. In less than a century, this scene would be replaced by one of a busy, six-lane road as Cedar Glen became the biggest gateway to the Heights from the city of Cleveland.

One of Cedar Glen's most salient characteristics is its gradual rise in elevation. The western edge of the Portage Escarpment causes this natural formation. The Portage Escarpment not only divides the Allegheny Plateau and the Great Lakes Basin, but also acts as a boundary between Cleveland and its suburban "Heights" to the east. Originally the eastern part of Cedar Glen and the high ground to which it leads belonged to East Cleveland Township. When Cleveland Heights incorporated as a village in 1903, it engulfed the southern part of East Cleveland Township, which included farmland and Cedar Glen.

Another natural feature that, for a time, made Cedar Glen a well-known area was Doan Brook, which was piped and buried underground in 1929. In the early 1800s, bluish grey sandstone called Euclid bluestone was quarried along the brook. The hard sandstone was used for everything from laundry tubs to sidewalks. Later in the century Doan Brook again brought attention to Cedar Glen. Dr. Nathan Hardy Ambler was a former dentist and the owner of the Cedar Glen property through which Doan Brook passes on its way from Shaker Lakes to Lake Erie. Although the blue-green water tasted like sulfur, Ambler began bottling and selling it to local restaurants. Because patrons believed the water offered health benefits and hydrotherapy was becoming a popular treatment method, Ambler and his partner Daniel O. Caswell opened the Blue Rock Spring House in Cedar Glen. The water resort and sanitarium operated from 1880 until 1908 when popularity began to fade.

Cedar Glen began its transition to one of Cleveland's most important transportation gateways from the suburbs in 1896 when entrepreneur and suburban developer Patrick Calhoun donated a large tract of land to the city's park system. One of the conditions of the gift was that Calhoun would be permitted to run a double-line street railway through Cedar Glen. Construction began that fall on the street railway that was intended to bring passengers to and from Euclid Heights and Ambler Heights, prestigious residential allotments on the "Overlook." The increase in suburban residents and visitors made possible the construction of the Cedar Fairmount retail district at the top of the hill.

By the 1920s Cedar Glen was bustling with heavy streetcar and automobile traffic. At the end of that decade a tunnel and platform were built on the western end of Cedar Glen in conjunction with the construction of the Cleveland Union Terminal, further connecting Cleveland Heights to its urban neighbor. In the mid 1950s Cleveland Transit Service (CTS), the predecessor of today's RTA, built the University Circle Rapid Transit Station at the same location on the bottom of Cedar Glen where the tunnel was constructed twenty-five years earlier. Completely transformed from its onetime status as a barren, dirt road, Cedar Glen now remains a well-traveled gateway to and from Cleveland.

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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.

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Is Amherst really the "Sandstone Center of the World?" In fact, it is, but it should share its title with South Amherst. Both Amherst and South Amherst have a vast amount of sandstone quarries. Not surprisingly, Amherst sandstone feels rough and gritty. After all, sandstone literally contains sand.

The first Amherst settlers in the early 1800s used the sandy rock to form grist mills and saw mills. Jacob Shupe was the first resident to build a grist mill on Beaver Creek and became quite wealthy using his sandstone grindstones. Not until 1847 did quarrying sandstone become big business in Amherst. A Canadian industrialist named John Worthington developed the first quarry using techniques developed by John Baldwin in Berea. Over the years several dozen quarry companies developed on the various quarries within Amherst and South Amherst. Large scale quarrying brought railroads through Amherst. It also contributed to an increase in the population. In 1830, Amherst's population was 552, growing to 2,482 by 1870. By 1924, most of the smaller companies had been bought out by the Cleveland Quarries Company (CQC) which still owns the majority of the local quarries today.

By the 1950s sandstone was used less widely as building material for homes and buildings. The CQC therefore ran an advertising campaign promoting the use of sandstone in the steelmaking process for linings in furnaces and ladles. For a while, CQC provided three fourths of U.S. steel manufacturers with their sandstone. Because of low demand, however, CQC shut down operations in 1992. It reopened later in the decade but now conducts only a fraction of the amount of work that it had in the past.

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Charles Schweinfurth (1856-1919) was one of the premier architects in Cleveland around the turn of the 20th-century. He arrived in Cleveland in 1883 and went on to design a number of structures in and around the city, including a number of the mansions that lined Euclid Avenue's famous "Millionaires' Row."

The four sandstone bridges Schweinfurth designed in Rockefeller Park cross over Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard at St. Clair Avenue, Wade Park Avenue, Superior Avenue, and the railroad tracks just south of the Shoreway. They were erected between 1897 and 1900 and partially funded through a donation made to the Cleveland Park Board by John D. Rockefeller in 1896. The stone and concrete arched bridges feature winding staircases that lead down into Rockefeller Park. Although their condition declined somewhat over the years, the bridges have benefited from recent restoration work.

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