People of the Past

Lock 29 along the Ohio & Erie Canal.

NPS / Tim Fenner

The land that today makes up Cuyahoga Valley National Park has been home to humans for thousands of years. Native Americans were the first inhabitants. Different Native American 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.

The Native American villages, pioneer settlements, and canal worker communities are long gone. But each wave of residents left their mark. The artifacts, trails, farms, old mills, and canal remains of the Cuyahoga Valley provide clues to how past peoples lived their lives. Visiting the park's many historical sites is like visiting different time periods in the valley. Thanks to the park, those special places are preserved.

Learn more about the history and culture of the Cuyahoga Valley. You can also read and hear stories about daily life on some of the valley's historic farms.

Investigate what life was like in the Cuyahoga Valley during different periods of time:

• Native Americans - Learn more about the Paleoindians, the Hopewell, the Whittlesey and other late-prehistoric groups, and the historic tribes who lived in the valley.
• Western Reserve Pioneers - Learn more about the New Englanders who settled in Northeast Ohio starting in the late 1700s.
• Ohio’s Canal Era - Learn more about life in the 1800s when the Ohio & Erie Canal was in operation.
• Late 19th to Early 20th Century - Learn more about valley life during the end of the 1800s and start of the 1900s.