‘Doomed to the sewers’: Finding traces of Cleveland history in ghosts of dead waterways

In 1889, the Cleveland Plain Dealer published an essay that reads like a strange obituary.

The piece lists no author. And it glows with nostalgia and teems with descriptions of striking beauty.

The subject isn’t a person — it’s the ancient rivers, streams and creeks that once flowed through Cleveland.

In Cleveland’s early years, the natural landscape made the city into a major player in the nation’s iron industry. As the 1800s became the 1900s, the relationship began to shift. The growing city irreversibly shaped the landscape…

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