Cataract Falls on Mill Creek, formed by erosion of Cleveland shale and cascading 48 feet as the tallest waterfall in the county, powered the gristmill and sawmill built by William Wheeler Williams and Major Wyatt in 1799. Commissioned by the Connecticut Land Company to encourage settlement of the Western Reserve, the mills attracted people to Newburgh. Cleveland outgrew bustling Newburgh by 1830 and eventually annexed most of it. The founding of the Cleveland Rolling Mill in Newburgh, beginning with the firm of Chisholm, Jones, & Company in 1857, precipitated the growth of the steel industry in Cleveland. By 1868, under the management of Henry Chisholm, it became one of the first in the nation to produce steel using the Bessemer process. The Rolling Mill, later the American Steel and Wire Company, a subsidiary of U.S. Steel, purchased the millworks at the falls in 1872.
