The Valley Railway: How Rail Came to the Cuyahoga Valley, and Stayed

From 1871 to 1915 the Valley Railway was the Cuyahoga Valley's main rail line, linking Cleveland on Lake Erie with Akron and Canton to the south. Today the same route runs through the middle of Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Ohio as the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad.

The Valley Railway, now the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad, runs through the middle of Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Ohio. NPS.

A Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad train in the valley. NPS.

Before the railroad: the canal

From 1827 the valley relied on the Ohio & Erie Canal, which ran beside the Cuyahoga River from Akron to the wharves and rail depots of Cleveland. Flat-bottomed boats, usually pulled by horses and mules, made journeys of one to three days. The canal turned a valley of subsistence farms into one that grew crops for distant markets; warehouses went up along it, and canal crews and passengers found more places to stay.

Frank and Catherine Gorris, about the 1890s, at Lock 38 of the Ohio and Erie Canal, whose building served in its time as a home, a tavern and a store. Western Reserve Historical Society, in the NPS Historic Structure Report for Lock 38 (1984).

By the 1850s railroads were overtaking canals and riverboats for heavy hauling. Ohio laid lines east to west and diagonally across the state, serving factories and the coalfields of the Mahoning and Tuscarawas valleys, and the Civil War showed how fast rail could move men and supplies. Yet as late as 1869 the Cuyahoga Valley still had no railroad.

David King's railway

That year Cleveland industrialist David L. King and other wealthy businessmen saw that without a railroad the valley's merchants and customers would stay tied to slow, mule-drawn canal boats. King obtained a charter for the Akron & Canton Railway, renamed the Valley Railway in 1871. His plan was to carry passengers south from Cleveland to Akron and Canton and bring coal back north from the Massillon fields, linking the coalfields of Stark and Tuscarawas counties with Cleveland and the coal-burning factories beyond — and to make a good profit doing it.

The Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad following the edge of the hillside and the route of the Cuyahoga River. NPS.

The route followed the Cuyahoga River and the old canal to take advantage of their gentle grades and wide curves. The first stretch ran fifty-seven miles from Cleveland to Canton, and the line was later extended south into Tuscarawas County, connecting with the Wheeling & Lake Erie and the Cleveland & Marietta railroads to the east and west. Sixteen depots lined the route, and spurs reached the stone quarries at Peninsula and Boston Mills and the Jaite Paper Mill. By 1891 the railway had "seventy-five miles of mainline track, nineteen miles of branch track, and thirty-five miles of side track." In 1888 freight earned 75% of its income, and coal made up 44% of the tonnage it hauled to Cleveland and other cities; there was a busy passenger service as well.

An 1880 newspaper advertises rides on the Valley Railway. The Stark County Democrat (Canton, Ohio), 29 April 1880. Chronicling America, Library of Congress.

Along the line

The line crossed varied ground. Past Alexander's Mill it ran over bottomland to Snake Flats Station Number One, where the valley narrowed and forced the track west, and on beside the canal to Snake Flats Station Number Two. Still curving west, it entered the Brecksville Rock Cut, a fifty-foot shale cliff leading to the Brecksville depot. South of Brecksville, trains crossed Chippewa Creek and passed through the "Great Hog Back," an eighty-three-foot cut named for clay that felt greasy to the touch. A mile south of the Peninsula depot, a spur connected the Cleveland Stone Company's quarries with the Amherst Quarries Company.

The old Valley Railway route at Brecksville Station. NPS.

The Brecksville-Northfield High Level Bridge, built in 1931, crosses the Cuyahoga River and the tracks. Historic American Engineering Record, HAER OH-66, Library of Congress.

A changed valley

The railway reshaped the valley. Small places such as Boston, Peninsula, Independence, Brecksville and Botzum became depot stops, tying them to a national rail network. Bridges carried the line across the changing terrain; mills grew into company towns; farmers with big barns shipped crops — and specialties such as cheese — to Cleveland, Akron and markets they had never reached before. Depots offered reliable telegraph service, and more people traveled by train.

Visitors can ride the train to a farmstead that once did business along the route. NPS / Ted Toth.

New rail road map of Ohio, prepared by H. Sabine, Commissioner of Rail Roads & Telegraphs, 1882. Library of Congress.

Decline

Competition came with the Connotton Valley Railroad, which hauled minerals and passengers on essentially the same route and took much of the Valley Railway's business. When the Valley Railway's officers refused to lay a second track for two-way traffic, the company lost heavily. Unable to supply the coal Cleveland's factories needed, it went bankrupt and became the Cleveland, Terminal and Valley Railroad, which the B&O took over completely in 1915 — the end of the Valley Railway as such.

Trucks, more powerful locomotives and, later, private cars cut the valley's dependence on the line. Passenger service ended by 1963, and all commercial rail service in the valley had stopped by 1985. The valley settled into a landscape of farms, cars and small hamlets with churches, gas stations, shops and post offices.

A railroad preserved

The tracks, though, still worked, and rail enthusiasts set out to keep them running:

The Park Service describes the railroad as the nation's only nonprofit heritage railroad of its kind. Its 2017 and 2018 annual reports counted 1,700 volunteers and an estimated 200,000 passengers a year.

Riding it today

Cyclists and hikers can take the train one way and return along the Ohio & Erie Canal Towpath Trail; a panoramic observation car shows views the towpath does not. The railroad also runs seasonal events, from dinners and tastings to the winter Polar Express.

Sources

• National Park Service, Cuyahoga Valley National Park: "Cuyahoga Valley Railway Cultural Landscape," citing Sam Tamburro, Valley Railway Cultural Landscape Report (draft). The article's mileages and dates for the southern extension do not agree (a terminus at New Philadelphia by 1880, but the extension past Canton only by 1884, and section lengths that exceed the 1891 mainline total), so they are not given here; it also calls the partnership that began in 1989 "twenty-year" in 2019, so no length is given. "Massilon" is corrected to Massillon. Pictures an earlier version of this page left out were restored on 2026-09-26.