Text By: Jack Geick
Design By: Gregory Wilson, University of Akron
Looking south upstream from Lock 12 in the Cascade Locks. The wooden gates at the ends of the locks were washed out during the 1913 flood.
Akron’s Cascade Locks are a unique artifact left over from Ohio’s canal era—an era that began in 1825, and ended in 1913 in a catastrophic flood. They are the remains of a steep staircase of seven locks on the Ohio & Erie Canal that permitted canal boats to ascend 70 feet in less than half a mile to reach the Akron Summit—the highest point in on a canal more than three hundred miles long. The Cascade Locks were part of the canal system that transformed Ohio from a primitive wilderness into the third most populous state in the union. Continue reading Exhibit: Cascade Locks Park, Akron