Free the Doan Brook

by Peggy Spaeth and John Barber

Friends of Lower Lake is a self-selected group of about 20 volunteers from five cities, ages 17 to 85, who’ve been working at Lower Lake park since 2017. That’s more than 10,500 hours on Sunday mornings to date.

Over these years we’ve learned much about the natural and human history of this place from research, mentors, experience, and our own observations. For example:

● Prior to European settlement the Doan Brook ran freely to Lake Erie, through forested ravines and floodplains where migratory indigenous people foraged and fished.
● The Shaker colony was here for 67 years (1822–1889). At this site, they deforested the landscape and created a lake by building an earthen dam to power a sawmill.
● After the Shakers left, the Van Sweringen brothers and others capitalized on their well-respected name to develop Shaker Heights, marketing Shaker Lakes as an amenity.
● In 1896 the Rockefellers deeded the parklands upstream from Gordon Park along the Doan Brook to Cleveland as a centennial gift. The city leased the acreage that lay in Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights to the two cities in 1947, likely to offload maintenance.
● Lower Shaker Lake became a regional magnet for the popular sport of canoeing, with a Canoe Club (membership: 30 white men) built on the southern beach in 1907. The building was demolished in 1976 due to declining membership and no sewer system save a bucket periodically dumped in the lake.

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