Lake Erie

From Great Lakes Wiki

Arguably the lake most argued about, Lake Erie has a rich history ranging from glacial slush to toxic sludge. Human technological development has brought about many a bittersweet circumstance, and Lake Erie is no exception. Do you have any memorable stories about Lake Erie, or have you discovered important issues that have not been picked up by the press? We would love to hear them.

Abridged History of the Region

Image:Kelley\'s Island.jpg

Kelleys Island

Glacial Islands

The frozen foreshadowings of Lake Erie, along with the other great lakes started with the slow moving glaciers that ebbed and flowed over the midwest since the Cenozoic Era. 5,000 years ago Lake Erie was dredged by a glacier called the Wisconsinan.

As a result, unique to the Erie basin are islands formed by the Wisconsinan as it moved. Large rocks became imbedded in its belly and scrapped the surface of the earth in magnificent displays of nature's power. Kelleys Island is the largest of these islands, though some of its glacier grooved surfaces were lost to the mining industry.

Native Americans
The Erie basin was home to many Native American and First Nation tribes. Interestingly, the lake itself was named after a tribe that occupied its southern shores, but which no Europeans ever made contact with. The Eries, and their neighbors, the Hurons, the Tobacco Indians, Neutral Nations, the Conestogas and Illinois were destroyed or assimilated during the Iroquois War between the years of 1642 and 1653.

When the United States began developing its formation of, and expansion into the Northwest Territory, Connecticut held the southeast shoreline of Lake Erie for its own uses. The western edge of the Connecticut Western Reserve was given to the remaining Native Americans in the area. Though, like most unfortunate stories of generosity, the Natives were once again pushed West and the land was developed.

War of 1812
Lake Erie was an important battle surface during the War of 1812-1814, between the British, occupying Canada and the Northwest Territory, and the Americans spreading west. The Americans won the battle of Lake Erie in 1813, led by Oliver Hazard Perryâ€™s small fleet. This greatly aided the close of the war and established the US-Canada border. Perryâ€™s ships were built in Erie, Pennsylvania, where a replica of one of them, Niagra floats.

Erie Canal

In one of the 35 locks on the Erie Canal

Devised by Dewitt Clinton, governor of New York, the Erie Canal was opened on October 26, 1825 and built by nothing more than skilled surveyors who studied French canal plans. The original idea was unpopular and dissenters collectively quoted "in the big ditch would be buried the treasury of the state to be watered by the tears of posterity." The canal was originally 40 feet deep and 4 feet wide, with 83 locks stretching 343 miles from Lake Erie to the Hudson River. It went through many facelifts over the years until its final Barge Canal permutation, in 1905, was approved by Theodore Roosevelt. The current canal system has an average width of 125 feet, a low end depth of 12 feet, and 35 locks equaling a total of 524 miles in length.

Thomas Allen wrote the popular folk tune, "Low Bridge, Everybody Down," about the Erie Canal in 1905. Today, Bruce Springsteen routinely performs the song with his trademark swagger.

A canal system was also kicked off in Cleveland, Ohio by Governor Josiah Morrow on July 4th, 1825. Dewitt Clinton even took part in digging the first hole. But, after 1850, and canals dug all the way to southern tip of Ohio at Portsmouth, profits had begun to run dry. The Ohio Erie canals were abandoned after three-quarters of a century for the more economical and profitable rail system.

The Cuyahoga ablaze

From the formation of the canals onward the coastal towns of Lake Erie saw more profits and more diversity. Being easily accessible by water is what made these back-territories thriving and unique. Fairport, Ohio was a great hub for the Mormon migration west, and increasing immigrant populations in Detroit came from the ease of access granted by the seaway.

The Sandusky area also saw heavy traffic from the Underground Railroad throughout the mid to late 1800â€™s. Canadian journalist, Christopher Lackner, trekked the 500+ mile phantom rail line from Kentucky to Canada between the months of June and September, 2006. His journey passes through Lorain, Ohio and was chronicled for the Ottawa Citizen and features superb writing, deep existential reflections and out of body experiences.

Cuyahoga River Fire

Lake Erie holds the distinction of having been the most polluted of the Great Lakes in the 1960's, when a flash fire on the surface of the Cuyahoga River raised an uproar from the Cleveland environmental activists. The result was the creation of the EPA, the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, immortal photographs and a Randy Newman song called "Burn on, Big River".

Erie shoreline recreation and economy

Agriculture

Ranching

Viticulture

Cedar Point

Aquaculture

Shipping

Mining

Forestry

Erie's Major Coastal Cities

Sandusky, OH
Put-in-Bay, OH
Cleveland, OH
Toledo, OH
Buffalo, NY
Erie, PA

Erie Problems

Beautiful coastline in Euclid, Ohio

Over the years Lake Erie has been plagued the most frequently of the Great Lakes with the effects of agriculture and industry waste run-off. The problems have been only magnified by Lake Erie's unique dimensions parameters compared to its sister lakes; resulting in a virtual dead zone in the 1960's.

Agricultural inputs were largely of phosphorus, commmon in fertilizer for recharging crop soil, but also in animal and human waste, industrial discharge, apatite mining, and erosion caused by development and deforestation. At the time of the phosphorus pollution peak in the 1960's, many household detergents also contained phosphorus, which escaped into the lakes through water treatment facilities. As it seeped into the lake, algae was most obliged to grow in haste. Over the years, as farms increased their use of fertilizers and phosphorus contamination rose through other channels of deposition Lake Erie started a process called [eutrophication]. Dead organic matter covered the lake bottom and a film of murk coated the surface. The hypoxic condition, or lack of oxygen, killed thousands of fish over a time, which then washed up on shores all over its coasts.

Other forms of pollution came from sewage disposal, toxic contamination through heavy metals and chemical dumping, overdevelopment of the coasts, runoff from agriculture and urbanization, and air pollution.

Point source, nonpoint source and atmospheric pollution

Erie solutions

Among the grassroots efforts to restore the lake to its previous splendor, government organizations were put together starting the 1972, starting with the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970, quickly followed by the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement in 1972 and the Clean Water Act, also in 1972.