Reputed to be a bootlegging tavern where numerous illegal and unsavory transactions occurred in the 1920s, the former inn at Hell's Half Acre now serves as the Canal Exploration Center for the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Nineteenth-century life in the Cuyahoga Valley revolved around the Ohio & Erie Canal, the most important means of transportation between the valley, Cleveland, and Akron between 1827 and 1840. Completed in 1832, the Ohio & Erie Canal transformed how local farmers moved and purchased products. Using the canal, area farmers could ship their products, including corn, wheat, and whiskey, for an average price of five cents per ton, (as opposed to fifteen or twenty cents per ton by wagon). This connection to city markets also meant that the canal boats could bring back new luxuries for valley residents, including cloth, coffee, tea, and glass.

In addition to the exchange of commodities, the canal boats also brought visitors to the valley's small and formerly isolated communities. The Village of Peninsula, for example, thrived as a canal and mercantile town, receiving money and fame as canal travelers stopped by for some leisurely hours in the local dance hall or tavern. Hell's Half Acre, a tavern and inn located at Lock 38 along the canal, represented one of many local businesses that took advantage of the new clientele. During its 150 years, the building at Hell's Half Acre served as a tavern, store, private residence, boardinghouse, and blacksmith shop. Around 1837, Moses Gleeson purchased the property and structure to take advantage of the canal traffic.

The Ohio & Erie Canal shaped almost every aspect of valley life, changing both economic and social fabrics. The canal connected the Cuyahoga Valley to a national transportation system that stimulated growth and specialization for local farms. Instead of growing diverse sets of produce and grains, farmers chose one or two crops to grow in large quantities, such as oats for the Schumacher cereal mills in nearby Akron. Linked to New York's Erie Canal, the Ohio & Erie Canal also brought new residents to Ohio, which became the third most populated state in the 1840s. Irish and German immigrants also travelled to the Western Reserve as canal diggers, working long hours for little pay. Now a part of the larger state and regional economy, Cuyahoga Valley farmers learned about new equipment and scientific farming practices that arrived through new residents, farm journals, and agricultural fairs.

Although the Ohio & Erie Canal transformed daily life in the Cuyahoga Valley, the canal reached its zenith by the last decades of the nineteenth century. Unable to compete with the Pennsylvania & Ohio Canal and the Cleveland & Pittsburgh Railroad, producers used the canal less and less. Railroads, which skyrocketed in production in the 1860s, shipped products faster and with less dependency on weather conditions. A catastrophic flood in 1913 caused the final destruction of the valley's canals.

While no longer a tavern or inn, Hell's Half Acre remains an important location for valley visitors to learn about the history of the Ohio & Erie Canal. Presently the Canal Exploration Center, the structure hosts interpretive rangers for the National Park Service who conduct daily canal boat and lock demonstrations, as well as educate visitors about the canal's important role in the history of the Cuyahoga Valley.

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Water, something we all take for granted today, was often the key resource needed to make a new settlement thrive. This was certainly the case for Kent, located in northern Portage County, about 40 miles southeast of Cleveland.

The area around Kent was originally owned by the Connecticut Land Company, which sold parcels of land to pioneers such as Moses Cleaveland, John Haymaker, and Zenas Kent in the late 1700s. One of the most important geographic requirements for the new settlers was a water source, which could be used to power various mills and, later on, factories. The Cuyahoga River runs through Kent, which made the city an ideal location for settlers. The river was both friend and foe to the early developers of the area. Several times floods caused terrible damage. To end this constant struggle with nature, the residents of Kent decided to construct a dam.

The Kent Dam was completed in 1836 and was considered to be one of the greatest engineering successes of its time. The arched dam is the oldest masonry dam in Ohio and is the only dam to be connected to a canal lock. In its early days the Kent Dam played an essential part in providing water power to the many businesses and mills located on the banks of the Cuyahoga. The lock connecting the dam to the Pennsylvania & Ohio Canal made shipping goods to and from the area very convenient.

In 2004, the dam was bypassed due to environmental problems associated with the river's low flow. Though the dam today has no real function, it remains intact because the citizens of Kent have grown to love it. The rich history of the dam and its impact on the development of the city have made it an essential part of Kent's identity.

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It is hard to imagine Cleveland developing into the city that it did had it not been chosen to be the northern end of the Ohio & Erie Canal. George Washington discussed the possibility of building a canal to connect Lake Erie with the Ohio River as far back as the 1780s, but it was not until 1825 that the Ohio Legislature voted to fund the project and construction commenced. An initial span opened between Akron and Cleveland on July 4, 1827. When fully completed in 1832, the Ohio & Erie Canal traveled 308 miles through 146 lift locks on its path between Cleveland and Portsmouth, Ohio.

The canal almost instantly turned Cleveland into a major commercial center. The city became the hub of a continental transportation network that connected with New York City via Lake Erie and New York's Erie Canal as well as with the nation's developing frontier areas and New Orleans via the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Goods like wheat, corn, coal, and lumber came north to Cleveland from the frontier while manufactured products from factories in the northeast arrived in Cleveland in return. Travel by road at this time — in places where actual roads existed — was unreliable and expensive. The canal dramatically cut the cost of transporting goods. It opened up new markets for manufactured goods, and tied Americans living at the margins of the nation into an expanding national economy.

The banks of the Cuyahoga River soon became populated with warehouses, docks, and shipyards. It was not long before the area became a center of industrial production as enterprising Clevelanders started turning the raw materials arriving from the hinterlands via the canal into new and highly demanded products like steel and petroleum. Many of the Irish immigrants who built the canal remained in town to work in these new industries.

Traffic and revenue on the Ohio & Erie Canal peaked around the 1850s. Already by then, railroads were taking over as the dominant mode of transportation. Cleveland, which had already established itself as a major city thanks to the canal, continued to prosper. Raw materials and finished goods poured into and out of town, but they did so on boxcars instead of canal boats.

The canal gradually fell into disuse. Steel factories tapped into it for use in their mills and flooding occasionally wiped out portions of it. Towards the end of the twentieth century, portions of the Ohio & Erie Canal came under the protection of the National Park Service with the creation of the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Other federal and local projects have preserved many sections of the canal. Thanks to these efforts, future generations will be able to view Ohio's original interstate highway system: the man-made ditch that brought prosperity to Cleveland on the deck of a canal boat.

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