Early Akron's Industrial Valley: A History of the Cascade Locks

A pictorial history of a piece of Ohio's canal heritage

In this study of Akron's Cascade Locks, canal historian Jack Gieck examines the story of this remarkable lock system, including a look at early-nineteenth-century entrepreneurs who exploited the precipitous terrain to found one of the first industrial centers in the American Midwest.

A steep staircase of sixteen locks was required to raise canal boats 149 feet in a single mile in order to reach the Akron Summit - the highest point on the 309-mile-long Ohio & Erie Canal. But what was considered by some to be an impossible feat of engineering represented a commercial opportunity for others, beginning with Dr. Eliakim Crosby, who built a two-mile millrace from a dam on the Little Cuyahoga River at Middlebury to his Stone Mill at Lock 5 on the canal. After turning Crosby's millstones, the water became the Cascade Race, flowing down the steep slope stones, parallel to the canal, giving rise to...