Family posing in front of Old Maid’s Kitchen circa 1880 (SCHS Pockrandt Collection).

Old Maid’s Kitchen, now called Mary Campbell’s Cave, is a wonderful geological feature, a large rock shelter on the Cuyahoga Falls side of the Gorge Park. It was a major feature of the area even when the first settlers began in 1825, because they were drawn by the many waterfalls in the Cuyahoga River.  The rockshelter was used for summer picnics since the early 1800s and is now part of the Gorge hiking trail.

The Old Maid’s Kitchen name was used in many other parts of the region as a name for such shelters. Historic lore notes that the name appears about every hundred miles. The cave also is connected with a story that the Lenape or Delaware Natives had camps in the area. Since they often took women and children as prisoners (many times adopting them), the story at Old Maid’s Kitchen says that a young non-Indian girl, Mary Campbell along with other children and several women were kidnapped and forced to lived in the cave for some time. There was enough research done by the Cuyahoga Falls Society of the Children of the American Revolution  to convince the then Park Director Harold Wagner that the story was possible.  A bolder with a commemorative rock was placed at the cave in 1935. However, there is little solid evidence that anyone actually lived there for any length of time.

Old Maid’s Kitchen/Mary Campbell’s Cave (2012).

There are two problems with this story challenge the reality. First the rock shelter may feel cool in the summer, but there are a number of little rivulets that seep through cracks in the rocks, so in the winter there are great icicles making it uninhabitable. Second, Native American bands would not have lived there as most native groups built their camps on high ground where they had a view of the surrounding area. Native captivity stories are part of a long history of sensational literature.