The Portage Path Connected Lake Erie with the Ohio River

The Portage Path formed a vital link in the shortest and best water route between Lake Erie and the rivers flowing south to the Ohio River. Created and used in reverse by the First Americans, perhaps two thousand years ago by the Mound Builders whose earthworks still stand two and a quarter miles north, it later lay in the land occupied by the Erie Indians until the late 1500's. In the 1700's, other tribes, notably the Delaware, moved into the area and established camps and villages, including the major village of Cuyahoga Town at Old Portage, where two important Indian trails intersected. The path became an important landmark for white explorers, possibly as early as the French in the 1600's, appeared on an English map in 1728, and was traveled by James Smith in 1756 while he was a captive of the Delawares. The Treaty of Fort McIntosh in 1785 set the new western boundary of the United States along the Portage Path, the Treaty of Greenville in 1795 opened land east of the portage in the Western Reserve to white settlement, Moses Warren surveyed the path in 1797, and land to the west was surveyed after the 1805 Treaty of Fort Industry. Local property is still recorded as either east or west of the Portage Path.

Akron, Ohio · United States