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photo provided by NPS Historic Photo
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photo by Bob Trinnes
Sixty feet high, with a strong stream of water pouring over its sandstone-and-shale face, Brandywine Falls provides both beauty and energy.
“There’s magic in that water,” says Rebecca Jones Macko, an interpretive park ranger for Cuyahoga Valley National Park. “The power of that water has drawn Native peoples, it’s drawn European peoples there for hundreds — if not thousands — of years.”
Today, Brandywine Falls — part of the national park — is popular with hikers and naturalists. In the days of businessman George Wallace, however, it was a site of industry. Wallace built a mill at the peak of the falls in 1814, harnessing the moving water.
“You can capitalize on the power of that falling water by creating a mill race,” she explains. “He built the mill using the water to turn a wheel, which then can saw lumber or grind grain.”
The construction caused a tectonic economic shift, facilitating the growth of the area into a small village — Brandywine. It soon included a woolen mill, several homes and a distillery.
“The falling water writes the story of that little community, and for a while, that was one of the few places where you could take your grain, in this immediate area, to get it ground,” says Jones Macko. “It was a thriving little crossroads community.”
But the boomtown didn’t last. New avenues for commerce — including the Ohio & Erie Canal, which began construction around 1825 — spelled an end to the area’s economic stronghold. Still, activity persisted.
In an area close to Brandywine Road during the late 1920s, an artist colony sprung up, helmed by celebrated Cleveland painter William Sommer. Earlier, in that same decade, Champion Electric Co. built a new factory over the mill’s ruins — before its destruction by lightning in 1937. The area was eventually purchased by the National Park Service sometime around the late 1970s or early 1980s.
At present, the site’s only remaining 1800s-era building is the house of Wallace’s son, James Wallace, now a bed and breakfast called the Inn at Brandywine Falls. The inn’s first keepers worked with the State Historic Preservation Office to restore the house to its mid-1800s appearance — and rescue elements of the home’s original barn.
Other remnants of the falls’ past are still visible to those who seek them out.
“The historic foundation remains of what had been originally the gristmill foundation and then was later added on by Champion Electric Company,” Jones Macko says. “The keen observer can still see, in the rock at the top of the waterfall … a straight line across, which is where, originally, the mill race sat that directed the water to turn the wheel. And if you look closely, you might even see an iron ring or two that’s left from the days of the old gristmill-sawmill combination.”
Visitors to Brandywine Falls can hike the 1.5-mile Brandywine Gorge Loop trail to see cinder blocks and other industry remnants, as well as use a boardwalk to get close to the rushing water. Though there may be no village, there is still a sense of community.
“The thing about Cuyahoga Valley is it preserves the stories of the common man,” says Jones Macko. “They didn’t just make a living — they made a life.”
8176 Brandywine Road, Sagamore Hills Township, nps.gov/cuva
