
NPS/Tim Fenner
The land that today makes up Cuyahoga Valley National Park (CVNP) has been home to humans for thousands of years. American Indians were the first inhabitants. Different American Indian cultures hunted and built villages in the valley during different periods. By the middle 1700s, Europeans were establishing trading posts in the valley, and a few decades later settlers from New England started coming to stay. Those frontier communities eventually became towns, their growth was attributed to the canal, railroad, and later interstate highways.