Tinker's Creek Aqueduct
The mid-nineteenth-century construction of the Ohio & Erie Canal connected smaller townships and farms to cities outside of the Cuyahoga Valley. The project, which lasted from 1825 through 1832, also brought new people into the valley as part of building crews. Thousands of men, including many immigrants, were hired to dig ditches, build embankments, and construct locks and gates. To manage the water levels, engineers needed to find a way to prevent local creeks and rivers from intermingling with the canal water. The construction of at least three aqueducts allowed the canal water to pass over smaller bodies of water without interruption.
Tinker's Creek represents the largest tributary flowing into the Cuyahoga River. Named for Captain Joseph Tinker, a boatsman and member of Moses Cleaveland's survey crew in the late eighteenth century, the creek originates in Streetsboro and then flows west where it meets the Cuyahoga River in Valley View. To bridge the Ohio & Erie Canal over Tinker's Creek, contractors hired men to build an aqueduct. Between 1825 and 1827, laborers earned about $.30 per day, as well as whiskey, to work on the project. Workers built a wood-lined trough, steel truss, and sandstone piers to transport canal water and boats over the creek. Canal workers also constructed similar aqueducts at Furnace Run, Mill Creek, and Peninsula.
Excessive flooding, a problem for many man-made structures in the valley, required the aqueduct to be rebuilt in 1845 and 1905. The last aqueduct to survive in the valley, the National Park Service was forced to remove the structure in 2007 after severe deterioration. In 2011, the National Park Service began a restoration project to rebuild the aqueduct and rehabilitate its masonry foundations. Today, the restored aqueduct stands as a testament to the history of human impact on the valley's environment, and how such technological developments transformed the daily lives of past and present valley residents.
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