Browse Exhibits (41 total)

This exhibit examines Mentor, Ohio from early America to the modern era.

Native Americans lived in the region prior to the settling of the Western Reserve. Early residents arrived in Mentor in 1797. These residents named the community after the character "Mentor" in Greek mythology keeping with the tradition of the Western Reserve.

Mentor grew rapidly due to the town's proximity to Lake Erie and the Ohio and Erie Canal. The railroad would soon pass through Mentor in the early 1850's. Mentor served as the home President of James A. Garfield and father of the Uncle Sam.

The City of Mentor itself was officially established in 1855.  Many Mentor residents earned their living as florists or horticulturalists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  Due to the beautiful rosebushes developed in the city in the 1930s, the city had earned the nickname, "Rose Capital of the Nation." Mentor developed also as tourist trade attracting businessmen that sought to escape from nearby Cleveland and other industrial areas.

Following World War II people settled into the suburbs such as Mentor; however still working in Cleveland. In the 2000 U.S. Census, Mentor was the most populated city in Lake County with over 50,000 people residing.

The story of the Cuyahoga River in the second half of the twentieth century is one of both economic prosperity and environmental decline. This time period begins with great industrial productivity in the Cuyahoga River Valley based on two companies, Standard Oil (Sohio) and Republic Steel. These two companies were symbols of industrial power in the United States that altered the landscape of the Cuyahoga River forever. This same story and timeline has an inverse relationship with the water and air quality of the same geographic region. During the fifties and sixties the river was essentially dead and the air was choking. It wasn't until TIME Magazine published an article about the river fire that actions were taken to improve the environmental quality of the region.

TO THE USER: Examine the inverse relationship between industrial prosperity and environmental decline as you look at the images in the exhibit. What evidence do you see (or not see) of BOTH economic prosperity and environmental decline?

Tugboats play a major role in along the river.  They are used for icebreaking, ship assistance, and towing. 

Doan Brook is a watershed that flows through the communities of Cleveland Heights, Shaker Heights, and University Heights.  A watershed is an ecological system of streams, brooks, rivers and lakes which flow into a larger lake or ocean.  The Doan Brook watershed flows into Lake Erie.

"Anyone who falls in the Cuyahoga, does not drown, ... he decays." (TIME Magazine. Aug. 1, 1969). For dedades pollution on the Cuyahoga River was out of control.  National attention was drawn to the pollution problem with information about the Cuyahoga River fire of June 22, 1969 appearing in the widely publicized TIME issue of the Ted Kennedy scandal of Chappaquiddick. That along with efforts by then mayor Carl Stokes, sparked the interaction of community groups, the city of Cleveland, the state of Ohio and the federal government to attack polluted water ways.