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…

With the opening of Wade Park in 1882 and then Gordon Park some ten years later, the Doan Brook valley on Cleveland's east side was turning into a picturesque stretch of public parks as the 19th century came to a close. On July 22, 1896, during…

When William J. Gordon died in 1892, he donated the land that became known as Gordon Park to the City of Cleveland under the condition that it would forever remain a free, public park. By the time of his death, Gordon, who made his fortune in the…

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…

Thirza Skinner Pelton and her husband Brewster Pelton purchased the land that became Lincoln Park in 1850 from Francis Branch, the son of a Connecticut pioneer who settled what is now the Tremont neighborhood in 1818. The Peltons intended part of…

Forest Hill was once the sweeping estate of oil baron John D. Rockefeller. Originally from a small town near the Finger Lakes in upstate New York, Rockefeller purchased the land along Euclid Avenue as a commercial venture in 1873, opening (along…

Laid out by Moses Cleaveland's surveying party in 1796 in the tradition of the New England village green, Public Square marked the center of the Connecticut Land Company's plan for Cleveland and, soon, a ceremonial space for the growing…