doan brook parks nature

© 2015 Bluestone Heightsbluestoneheights.org

glacial terraces – fossil beaches – stream courses – springscurrent stream enhancement

Doan Brook Parks Nature

Portage Escarpment, St Clair Terrace, Lake Erie Plain

June 6, 2015

Hiking Rockefeller Park south & Wade Park north

Roy Larick

Doan Brook Watershed PartnershipSponsored by the

lake plain

Dugw

ay B

rook

WB

Doan Brook

Blue Rock Brook

Portage Escarpment

St Clair Terrace

Lake Warren beach

Rockefeller P

ark

Wade Park

Doan Brook Parks explores the Rockefeller and Wade Parks landscape in the hand of natural and human forces.

On the hike, we will find evidence for the rise of local bedrock, for bulldozing glacial ice and for Doan Brook’s cutting of a beloved ravine.

We will also review the historic weave of nature and culture in park development.

Finally, we will view the recently completed Doan Brook Enhancement Project. The work is designed to reduce stormwater flows and restore local natural habitat.


“Rockefeller Park contains a total area of 273 acres and consists of three sections: Brookway, Cedar and Fairmount. It contains 12 miles of beautiful driveways and 5 acres of lakes. Two separate boulevards, an upper and lower, connect it with Wade Lake and Gordon Park . The ground was purchased privately by Mr. Rockefeller’s agents and later presented to the people of Cleveland.”Postcard caption, c. 1910

Blue Rock Brook

sandstone terrace

bluestone terrace

Portage EscarpmentSchematic view looking southward from Lake Erie

Doan Brook Parks hike area

The Portage Escarpment is Cleveland’s major terrain feature. This ancient bedrock massif resisted the bulldozing effects of Ice Age glaciations. Below the massif, glaciers flattened the lake plain.

As the last glacier retreated northward about 14 thousand years ago, rushing melt water spawned our ‘escarpment run’ streams including Doan, Blue Rock and Dugway Brooks.

Wade and Rockefeller Parks straddle Doan Brook as it leaves the steepest part of the escarpment to find the lake plain.

Bedrock deposition, glacial sculpting and stream cutting produced the parks landscape.


lake plain

Blue Rock Brook

Portage Escarpment Timeline

sandstone terrace


bluestone terrace


Lake Erie rises to present levelNiagara River lowers Lake ErieFinal glacial retreatFinal glacial advanceGlacial advances beginNorth American upliftEuclid bluestone depositedChagrin Shale deposited

412.6

16 23

2.5300360370

kakakakaMaMaMaMa

Lay down – uplift – sculpt

Portage Escarpment bedrocks were laid upon the Late Devonian sea bottom, >350 Ma (million years ago). Mud built the shales (Chagrin, Cleveland and Cuyahoga). Silt built the Euclid bluestone. Sand gave Berea and Sharon sandstones.

Tropical sea bottom

Glacial sculpting

Devonian earth

L M

ichi

gan

L M

ichi

gan

L Erie

L Erie

L Ontario

L Ontario

L Huron

L Huron

About 300 Ma, our area uplifted from the sea. The Ohio and Saint Lawrence watersheds began to form. Much later, about 2 Ma, the earth cooled and great glaciers began mounting in northern North America.

Uplift

we-are-stuff

glacier

glacier

pro-glacial lakes

Sixteen thousand years ago, the last glacier retreated through our area. The ancestors of Lake Erie began to emerge. Just 14 ka, Doan and nearby streams cut through escarpment to create the ravines of today.

Just 23 ka (thousand years ago), the last glacial advance bulldozed the rock sandwich slope (Portage Escarpment) to create two terraces: one atop the Berea Sandstone and one atop the Euclid bluestone.


lake plain

Blue Rock Brook

sandstone terrace

Humans

bluestone terrace


• Reviving the natural regulation of stormwater at low cost and high community benefit. • Reconnecting fragmented natural

habitat areas as a means to build local biodiversity.

In learning natural history and the ways in which natural & human forces interweave, we can better address two crucial local environmental issues:

We have buried our streams and flattened our features. With development, environment is degraded and biodiversity is reduced.



lake plain


sandsto

ne

terrace

Two centuries of human impact

Rockefeller Park, c. 1900

Nor

th

K. Roberts

K. Roberts

USGS LiDAR underlayGoogle Earth aerial viewer

blue

stone

terra

ce

Stream culvert data courtesy of NEORSD

R. Larick

Blue Rock spring, c. 1900

Rockefeller Park, 1897

R. Larick

Rockefeller Park Spring, 1911

Parks-on-Doan

Dugway W

B

Doan

Blue Rock

Cleveland Heights

Cleveland

The Nature-Culture Weave

Porta

ge

Esca

rpmen

t

lake

plain

St C

lair

T

erra

ce

Ambler spring, near Fairhill Rd

Wade Park Spring. 1900

CMP

Lake

Warren beach

CMP: Cleveland Memory Project

ceveland.about.com

Wade Oval, 1874

Rockefeller Park

Rockefeller ParkCMP

CMP

CMP

CMP

WRHS

East Cleveland

Early settlers valued clear (Wade, Rockefeller).Victorian water cure valued mineral (Ambler, Blue Rock).

Eddy gristmill, 1809Cozad gristmillCrawford sawmillSprings

Mills

E 10

5th

Wade Park

Superior

Euclid

Eucli

d

MayfieldLake

View

Cem

eter

y

Rockefeller Park

Wade Park

D.J. Lake

hike pathway

Wade Park bridge, 1911

Springs & Small Streams

Wade Park spring The feature lies at the head of a small Doan Brook tributary. During his land tenure, 1872-1882, Jeptha Wade assembled boulders and a rustic sandstone staircase. Some of the physical components are still present at the Cleveland Botanical Garden’s Japanese Garden.

Rockefeller Park springLittle has been recorded about this feature which was improved with J.D Rockefeller’s bequest of 1896. A boulder assemblage lies on the east bank of the Doan Brook ravine opposite the Rockefeller Park lagoon. In a nearby low spot, a sewer grate may indicate the spring outflow.

Cleveland lies on a sandwich of alternating porous and impervious rocks. Such conditions breed springs.

Springs provided drinking water and social gathering places. They also played into the Victorian era hydrotherapy movement. Private springs were thus commercialized. At public springs, the settings were often ‘improved’ by assembling glacial erratic boulders around the outflow.

Wade Park Spring. 1900

Doan Brook cuts through an area where fossil beaches (porous) lie over glacial clay (impervious). Early settlers here found numerous springs.

Rockefeller Park spring

June 2015, Rockefeller Park

Wade Park spring

June 2015, CBG Japanese Garden

Wade Park spring

Wade Park, man at Spring Valley Ravine, west from new Garden Center buildingWRHS 2833

"The Spring" in Wade Park WRHS 2800

Rockefeller & Wade Parks 1898

Rockefeller

Spring Pond Brook

Cozad mill

Wade Park spring


next slide

Spring Pond Brook

Spring Pond Brook

Doan Brook

Rockefeller Park

Hough Ave

Ansel Ave

E 93

rd S

t

Wade Park spring In 1881, Spring Pond Brook was a Doan Brook tributary draining an area now covered by the Cleveland Clinic and Fairfax. The name derives from spring –fed wetlands in the Amesbury-E 93rd-Lamont area. The stream is now entirely buried with outflow near the Rockefeller Park lagoon.

lagoon

Lamont Ave

current Amesbury Ave

Wade Park north, 1881

Wade Park spring

The Wade Park spring feeds a small stream (let’s call it Cozad Run) that flows westward to Doan Brook. Jeptha Wade ‘improved’ the land with several features. Cleveland Museum of Natural History now sits on the stream course, including the area of Wade’s ‘iron bridge’. In the mouth area, Wade’s carp pond now holds the Cancer Survivors memorial and the new bioswale.

CMNH

Cozad Run

carp pond

Doan Brook

mouth

CMP

Cozad Mill

One of the pair of Cozad’s granite millstones is on display on the east side of the lagoon.

Doan Brook millpond

Samuel Cozad’s gristmill was of the latter type. To create a millpond, Cozad dammed the north end of a large Doan Brook meander. Jeptha Wade later expanded the millpond. This is the origin of the current Fine Arts Garden lagoon.

The East Side’s earliest water powered grist mills were built at bluestone waterfalls on the Portage Escarpment (Mill Creek, 1799; Dugway Brook, 1809; Euclid Creek, 1809).

Later, milling moved down onto the lake plain. On the plain, a millpond had to be built to provide the necessary hydraulic head.

WRHS

Wade Park south, 1881

Cozad millpreserved millstone

1876

CMP

Wade Park

Fine Arts Garden

Samuel Cozad millstone

MLK Jr DriveMelan Arch

E 105th concrete arch bridge

stone parapet

carriage road Melan Arch

Historical bridges

Cozad mill© 2015 Bluestone Heightsbluestoneheights.org

stone parapet

Rockefeller Park Wade Park Ave masonry arch bridge

Designed by Charles Schweinfurth (1856-1919)Built, 1897-1900 Partially funded by the J.D. Rockefeller bequest of 1896

Gasparini, Vermes & Conley. Cleveland's historic bridges: architectural and engineering masterpieces. Wilbur J. and Sara Ruth Watson Bridge Book Collection, CSU Special Collections. 2002. Revised, 2003.

Wade Park carriage road arch (missing spandrel wall)

MLK Jr arch with Berea Sandstone spandrel wall

Concrete-Steel Engineering Company, ‘Successors to the Melan Arch Construction Company,’ Park Row Bldg, New York NY1907

Wade Park Melan Arch bridges

About 1900, the City of Cleveland contracted for two Melan Arch bridges in Wade Park. At an early date, the Melan Arch system combined steel truss and cast concrete construction. The bridges are now historic.

CMNH

CMA

carriage rd Melan Arch

MLK DriveMelan Arch

Rockefeller & Wade Parks 1912

Rockefeller Park

Minus its decorative sandstone spandrel walls, the carriage road Melan Arch is still in place as the outflow of the Doan Brook University Circle culvert.

carp pond

CMNH construction on Cozad Run, 1960s CMP

Doan Brook Enhancement

Project

Doan Brook Enhancement Project2013-2014 (+2-yr warranty period)

4 acres covering 1,700 lineal ft of the DB channel

upstream start: MLK Blvd culvert inflow (at Jeptha Dr)downstream end 1st MLK bridge after the lagoon

$4.3M ($2.5M Cle/$1.8M NEORSD)

lagoon

Doan Brook

Doan Brook

Nor

th

bio-swale

bio-swale

Cancer Survivors Memorial


Wade Park Ave

E 10

5th S

t

MLK Jr Dr

CWRU Sun Farm

VA Hosp

Mt Sinai DrHough

Ave

Magnolia Dr

deep riffle structure

shallow riffle structures

Improve aquatic life habitat stable pools, riffles and grade controls low-flow channel along thalweg to reduce dry spell

stagnationuse terraced flood plains of re-used wall materials use plantings that fit the park setting

Goals:

Stabilize stream channel with dimension and profile to handle local flows reconstruct historic walls to slow slope & stream bank erosion reduce bank erosion & deteriorating walls create areas where the stream can safely access a floodplain

Maintain current stream channel alignmentMinimize impact to the historic Cultural Gardens

Doan Brook Enhancement

Project

Doan Brook Enhancement ProjectBio-retention basin and footbridges

Bioswale with native planting in area of the Wade carp pond

Boulder-cobble point bar reflects high velocity culvert outflow

Doan Brook Enhancement Projectemerging from the MLK – E 105th – Mt Sinai Dr culvert

Doan Brook Enhancement Project Rockefeller Lagoon parking lot bioswale

parking lot outflow bioswale inflow

Doan Brook Enhancement Project Rockefeller Lagoon segment deep riffle structure

Looking upstreamStream bank native planting

in foreground

midground

Looking downstream

Doan Brook Enhancement Project Rockefeller Lagoon segment shallow riffle structures

Structure 2

Looking downstream to Structure 1

Structure 1

Roy Larick

Walk back in time Look to the Future

Euclid bluestone outcropDoan Brook, Cleveland OH

Bluestone Heights

© 2015 Bluestone Heights

R. Larick

A production by

bluestoneheights.org

[email protected]

doan brook parks nature

Environment

lake erie lake erie

wade lake

lake erie doan brook

lake erie plain

ancestors of lake erie

bluestone heights

portage escarpment bedrocks

ka ka ka ka ma ma ma