Irishtown Bend

During the Mesozoic Era and until the end of the Tertiary period of the Cenozoic Era, the preglacial Teays River and Dover River carved most of the ancient Cuyahoga River valley into the Devonian and Permian bedrock of Ohio. At least four major glacial periods covered Ohio in ice during the last two million years. The glaciers that swept over the land left behind unsorted till and sorted outwash. Between 25,000 and 14,000 years ago, the Wisconsin glaciation blocked the Dover River's northward flow. Water backed up, until it began to flow southward along the course of the ancestral Tuscarawas River. As the ice sheet retreated, it left behind a recessional moraine near Akron, Ohio. The ice sheet retreated further, then made a minor advance. This advance left behind another recessional moraine near Defiance, Ohio. These moraines acted like dams, trapping water between them. The ephemeral lakes that formed laid down extensive deposits of clay and silt. Streams flowing down the sides of the moraines left behind alluvial fans and deltas. This left the ancient Dover River valley buried beneath as much as of various types of soil. About 10,000 years ago, several streams joined together north of the Defiance moraine and eroded their way through the buried Dover River valley to Lake Erie. Headward erosion eventually breached both the Defiance and Akron moraines and tapped into the southward flowing Tuscarawas River. As water levels receded, the northward-flowing Cuyahoga separated from the Tuscarawas (which still flows southward to this day). Irishtown Bend reflects the complex geology created over the last 252 million years. The Devonian shale bedrock of the area is overlain by of compact glacial till, followed by of stiff clay, of weak clay, of silt, of sand, and of fill dirt. These layers cause the hillside to be unstable. About above the mean water line, the shear strength is , while at the top of the hill the shear strength is . Geological data indicate that the hill is sliding into the river at a rate of about per year. Extensive fill dirt was placed on the slope from the late 1950s to the early 1960s. This increased pressure on the soil below, turning what had been a dormant or slow slide into an accelerated one. Regrading of the hillside occurred afterward, after which significant slope instability began. Fault scarps (ranging in size from a few inches to several feet) exist at the top of the slope (where the slope meets the West Side Plateau) and along Franklin Avenue. Since about 2004, subsidence and the emergence of medium fault scarps have occurred along Riverbed Street to the water, indicating the failure of the toe of the slope (likely due to failure of 1950s-era bulkheads) and increased water in the soil. There is evidence that a failure plane exists about behind the surface of the hillside. ==Emergence and disappearance of the neighborhood==

The Irishtown Bend landform is located on the west bank of the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio. It runs from Columbus Road downstream to the Detroit-Superior Bridge, a distance of about . It extends from the shore of the Cuyahoga River up the hill to Franklin Avenue and W. 25th Street. The summit of the west side plateau is roughly above the river. Formation of the neighborhood The Irishtown Bend neighborhood was part of a larger Irish enclave in Cleveland known as "the Angle". People of Irish descent first settled in Cleveland in large numbers about 1825. Most of the men had been workers on the Erie Canal, and as work on the canal ended they settled in Cleveland and moved their families to the small but growing town. Anti-Irish discrimination was strong, and the Irish were forced to settle on high ground along the shores of Lake Erie near the mouth of the Cuyahoga. This area, which later became known as Whiskey Island, was a peninsula which in 1827 was cut off by the creation of a new mouth of the Cuyahoga River. In the 1830s, the rapidly-expanding Cleveland economy had drawn more Irish to the area, doubling the size of the enclave and establishing "the Angle" as an adjunct to the Irish community on Whiskey Island. Irishtown Bend emerged as a residential community for Irish immigrants in the 1850s after the Great Famine of Ireland caused a massive wave of Irish immigration to the United States. By 1870, 10 percent of Cleveland's 100,000 residents were Irish. Nearly all the residents of Irishtown Bend after 1850 were predominantly unskilled laborers. Eighty residential parcels were laid out by the city. Nelson J. Callahan and William F. Hickey, historians of Cleveland's Irish community, state that nearly all the homes in Irishtown Bend were "shanties" (shacks), their riverside ends built on stilts over the steep ground. Archeological evidence from a Cleveland Museum of Natural History investigation in the 1980s indicates a starkly different picture of solidly built wood frame homes, built on level ground and many with concrete or stone foundations. Abandonment and demolition Beginning about 1898, Irishtown Bend began to be abandoned as residents moved into better homes elsewhere and strict national immigration limits meant there were few immigrants to replace them. A third of all residences had been demolished by 1912. Many more were vacant, and a number of temporary shacks were erected. A Hooverville grew up on the largely vacant Irishtown Bend in the 1930s. Most oral histories and written descriptions depicting housing here as a "shanty town" date to this period. Only five homes still stood in the area in 1952, and all of these had long been vacant. A garage made of concrete block was built at Irishtown Bend between 1952 and 1954, but this appears to be the only new construction in several decades. What was left of Irishtown Bend was razed in the mid to late 1950s. ==Other infrastructure at Irishtown Bend==

Railroad and associated infrastructure The Cleveland and Mahoning Railroad (C&M; later the Cleveland and Mahoning Valley Railroad) was founded in 1848 and authorized to build a line from Cleveland to Warren, Ohio, and then into Pennsylvania. The railroad intended to connect with the Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati Railroad in Cleveland, but a crossing of the Cuyahoga was never effected. The Atlantic and Great Western Railroad leased the C&M in July 1863, and agreed to complete the line within the Cleveland city limits. Work on a new passenger depot at the Scranton Flats began in August 1863, and the tracks to the new depot were completed on November 4. In March 1880, the Atlantic & Great Western emerged from bankruptcy as a new company, the New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio Railroad (NYP&O). In the spring of 1886, the NYP&O extended the old C&M route in Cleveland by crossing the base of the Scranton Peninsula, curving around Irishtown Bend, and crossing "the Angle" to reach and then bridge the Old Ship Channel. Trains began running July 4. Docks were built on either side of Columbus Road on Irishtown Bend. The rail yards extended for nearly along the southwest bank of the Old Ship Channel, around Irishtown Bend, in Tremont, and east of Broadway Avenue in Cleveland's North Broadway and South Broadway neighborhoods. Docks were built just north of where the tracks curved westward to pass under Detroit Avenue. The railroad built a new, steam-operated dock in 1912 near what is now the Detroit-Superior Bridge. It was designed by a local firm, Wellman Engineering. Traffic along the Cuyahoga River in this area was so extensive, the C&MV had a rail yard eight tracks wide along Irishtown Bend to accommodate it. Bulkheading the Bend The navigable Cuyahoga River in and near Cleveland has a number of exceptionally tight meanders. As Great Lakes freighters became increasingly larger near the end of the 1800s, these meanders became a hindrance to river traffic. The city of Cleveland the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers worked together over the next six decades to implement a plan to widen the river in a number of places, especially where the meanders were tight. Irishtown Bend was one of the key trouble spots. The first extensive cuts on the west bank of the river occurred in August 1940. Steel sheet bulkheads were driven vertically into the riverbed at the shoreline to help hold back the land above. The widening was only partially completed when World War II broke out and delayed completion of the project. A 15-year postwar battle to win funding for completion of the river widening project finally concluded in the 1950s, and the west bank once more widened and bulkheaded in 1958. Sewers, bridges, and public housing Although records are scanty, a brick sewer was built along what is now Riverbed Street some time about 1900. In 1947, Cleveland sewer district engineers built a brick and concrete sewer tunnel known as the Westerly Low-Level Interceptor about below Riverbed Street. The tunnel was poorly designed, and constructed in an area known to be prone to subsidence. Another 15 three-story "garden apartments" were built around Riverview Towers between W. 25th Street, Bridge Avenue, and Franklin Avenue. Extensive fill dirt was placed on the slope from the late 1950s to the early 1960s, and the hillside regraded. The fill dirt reactivated and accelerated existing slides, and initiated several new ones. Additional infrastructure changes on the hillside included relocated the intersection of Franklin Avenue and W. 25th Street farther north in 1965, and widening one-lane Riverbed Street to two lanes in 1985. The new eastern lane covered the main line of the now-removed railroad track. Damage due to soil slippage Problems with water saturating the northern end of Irishtown Bend and worsening the hill's stability problems were first identified in 1960, when the Erie-Lackawanna Railroad tracks north of the Lederer Terminal Warehouse subsided significantly and had to be repaired. An investigation by the CMHA concluded that saturated soil was the culprit, and blamed either an unspecified nearby broken water line or an unknown natural spring. A landslide occurred in 1966, which was later attributed to water saturation caused by either a broken water main or sewer line. The following year, drains and a gutter were constructed from W. 25th Street down to the river's edge to help guide runoff away from the slope. By 1989, extensive water seepage had begun to flow out of the hill and over Riverbed Street. About 2004 or 2005, the Irishtown Bend hill began to subside at a significantly higher rate. In November 2005, major cracks appeared in Riverbed Street. ==Lake Link Trail and potential park==

In 1987, Dr. Alfred M. Lee, an archaeologist at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, began a three-year-long series of archaeological digs at Irishtown Bend. With the instability of the Irishtown Bend making it increasingly clear that the area should not be used for important infrastructure, the city of Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, several nonprofits, and landowners at Irishtown Bend began parallel discussions in 2006 about the future of the area and the abandoned railroad tracks. In January 2009, these groups issued a report, the "Flats Connections Plan", which advocated turning the abandoned trackbed between Kingsbury Run and Whiskey Island into a biking-hiking trail. The plan also included the construction of a new pedestrian bridge over the Old Ship Channel of the Cuyahoga River to reconnect the tracks with the old rail yard on Whiskey Island. Another of the plan proposed converting the Irishtown Bend hillside into a park, playgrounds, and wetlands. The Cleveland Foundation Centennial Lake Link Trail Initial design work for trail began in 2009. The Cuyahoga County Planning Commission took over planning for the pedestrian bridge linking the trail to Whiskey Island, and was considering four design finalists by October 2014. A design by Miguel Rosales/Schlaich Bergermann Partner/Osborn Engineering was chosen as the preferred alternative in June 2015. The George Gund Foundation gave $2 million ($ in dollars) to the project in November 2011, and The Cleveland Foundation made a $5 million ($ in dollars) gift in August 2014. In honor of The Cleveland Foundation gift, Cleveland Metroparks (designer, builder, and eventual maintainer of the trail) said the path would be renamed the Cleveland Foundation Centennial Lake Link Trail. The Cleveland Foundation Centennial Lake Link Trail was constructed in three phases. Work began on the south leg of the Cleveland Foundation Centennial Lake Link Trail (from the head of the Ohio and Erie Canal Towpath Trail to Columbus Road) in the fall of 2014, Work began on the northern section of the trail (from the Detroit-Superior Bridge to the Old Ship Channel) in August 2016, and it opened on June 9, 2017. Work on the middle section of the trail was delayed pending stabilization of the Irishtown Bend hillside. Potential park The Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority took the lead in identifying a solution for stabilizing the soil at Irishtown Bend in October 2012. In 2009, the Corps of Engineers estimated that stabilizing the hillside would cost $219 million ($ in dollars). Ohio City Inc. (a nonprofit community development corporation) led the city of Cleveland, the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority, and the nonprofit park advocacy group LAND Studio in a planning effort to begin the work of designing the park and the trail that would run through it. Public meetings about the park design began to be held in June 2017. A revised park design was unveiled in late August 2017. A primary entry plaza was planned for the intersection of Franklin Avenue and W. 25th Street, with a secondary entry plaza and cultural center near the Detroit-Superior Bridge. The proposed park had four zones. At the summit on the south was Ohio City Farms, which would be integrated into the park. North of the farms was a neighborhood park and playground. The hillside above Franklin Avenue and between Franklin Avenue and Riverbed Street would be a history zone, with boardwalks over excavated archeological sites. From Riverbed Street to the shoreline would be a riverfront zone, with pedestrian promenade and man-made wetland. Paths would zigzag across the park, connecting the zones. A high canopy walkway in the neighborhood park and history zones would allow pedestrians to access residential areas on north of the park via an arch in the Detroit-Superior Bridge (rather than descending all the way to the riverbank or up onto W. 25th Street). The proposed park design was submitted to the Cleveland Planning Commission on September 1, 2017. The state of Ohio approved $2.5 million ($ in dollars) to support stabilization of Irishtown Bend in March 2018, half what had been sought by backers of the park. Cuyahoga County leased two acres (parcels 003-21-001 and 003-20-004) adjacent to the Superior Viaduct to the park planning organizations in April 2018. The terms of the lease are $1 per year, with an initial term of 25 years. It is renewable for an additional 50 years, up to a total of 99 years. The planning organizations have an option to buy, but the county will retain an easement to allow inspection of the former bridge. ==Irishtown Bend Archeological District==

The Irishtown Bend Archeological District is a historic site located on the Irishtown Bend. ==References==