The ever-reliable Anonymous Searcher provided inspiration once again today. I’m not sure how I’d write half of my articles if it wasn’t for the inspiration of random search engine queries that somehow land on Twelve Mile Circle. It’s my daily Google Love. What can I say? My unknown friends in the general public need to know these things. Today they wanted to find the highpoint of Summit County, Ohio.
That’s an easy request. I can find that answer in about fifteen seconds on the County Highpointers Association website. Yes, that’s a genuine organization and I use their website regularly. County highpointers qualify as a highly specialized set of county counters. Traveling to every county of the United States isn’t good enough for them. They also want to touch the highest points of elevation. I’ve done that myself and more than once so of course I believe it’s perfectly rational. I don’t go out of my way to pursue this but I understand and appreciate it.
The County Highpointers identified a location in Summit County about three-quarters of a mile north of West Richfield, at 1,320 feet of elevation.
It’s not much of a summit. However it has a clear marker right along the western edge Broadview Road at the entrance to Camp Hilaka, formerly a Girl Scout retreat. This is an easy highpoint, the kind that I like to visit. A big blue sign by the side of the road marks it, clearly visible in this Street View image. Trekkers can’t possible miss it.
There’s also a dirty little secret. Highpointers have noticed that despite the claim posted on the sign, terrain directly across the street marks the true summit of Summit County. It’s about five feet higher. I guess the county engineer didn’t want to see citizens trampling through someone’s front yard.
That finding answered the random query but it felt a little anticlimactic to me. That’s a rather inconsequential summit.
BUT THAT’S NOT HOW SUMMIT GOT THE NAME!
The actual “Summit” referenced by the county name isn’t the county highpoint at all. It’s the highpoint of an historic remnant from the early-industrial age: the Ohio and Erie Canal. It sort-of followed the map image I embedded above — while Google provides driving, walking, bicycle and public transportation options, it doesn’t include water routes, so you’ll need to use your imagination. How times have changed. Canals were once a major form of transportation used to open wilderness areas to settlement and trade. Ohio had several hundred miles of canal by the middle of the 19th Century.
The Ohio and Erie Canal became a particularly complicated undertaking since it had to traverse the St. Lawrence Continental Divide. One part of the waterway flowed north via the Cuyahoga River, to Lakes Erie and Ontario, to the St. Lawrence River and finally to the North Atlantic. The other side of the waterway flowed south via the Tuscarawas River, to the Ohio River, the Mississippi River and then to the Gulf of Mexico.
The summit happens atop the crest between the two watersheds. A complete crossing required passage through 49 locks including an engineering marvel called the Cascade Locks. As the Northeast Ohio Journal of History described:
“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.”
That’s a great article by the way. You should read it.
Akron
The Ohio and Erie Canal contributed to the success of cities such as Cleveland and Columbus. It also created the very reason for Akron’s existence. A savvy speculator, Simon Perkins, understood that canal boats would take much of a day to cross the divide using slow but effective locks. People in transit needed services and this key constriction created perfect conditions for a town to provide them. He was influential enough to finagle a route across the divide through land that he owned. The resulting town, Akron (from the Greek, “high place”) quickly became an industrial powerhouse. More than a half-million people live within its metropolitan area today.
The summit of the canal that inspired names for a city and a county was located at Lock 1, just west of the original Akron town center at Main & Exchange Streets.
The history I uncovered was infinitely more interesting than the original anonymous query. I’ve barely scratched the surface. Much more information exists at the websites of the Cascade Locks Park Association, Ohio and Erie Canalway and the Ohio and Erie Canal National Heritage Corridor.
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