The Lower Lake

The Lower Lake is actually patented!  James Kirby didn't like lakes with mucky bottoms.  He knew that during fair weather, the water coming into the lake was clear, but when storms raised the level of water in the incoming streams, the churning water swept up mud and silt from the bottom of the stream and brought them into the lake.  So, he invented and patented a way to let the clear water come into the lake while making sure the dirty storm water flowed into pipes under the lake and away downstream. 

Kirby did this by designing a multi-level gate, or intake dam, across the incoming creek. The gate had openings below normal water level to allow passage of the usual clear water. But the next highest level was a drain opening.  When the water rose high enough to be muddy, it would drop into the drain and be diverted under the lake and released below the large, downstream dam.

Did it work?

Only a few years after forming the lower lake, Kirby built the dam that would form the upper lake (Lake Linnea).  Kirby’s great-niece Gale Better says that it did.  According to her, the reason her Uncle Jim made the upper lake was that he wanted to stock it with bigger fish to catch! 

The question is: did he use his patented system on the upper lake?  The evidence suggests only a tantalizing “maybe”.

If Kirby's system worked, he would have built a small intake, filter dam upstream, as well as the large retaining dam downstream.  As it turns out, there already was a small cobblestone dam upstream.  Photos dating back to Kirby's time were taken of the dam repair.  But maybe that repair was actually a retrofit to divert storm water under the lake.

A lake Jim Kirby built near the camp after he sold it to the Girl Scouts may also have the clear-water system.

Click here to see James Kirby's patent on his clear-water lake.

Kenneth Swan of the Richfield Historical Society wrote in 1988 that he remembered:

 "Jim Kirby built a large lake on his property next to a large house that he built. .....Underneath the dam in the lake bed he had constructed a pipe to take overflow water under the lake to below the dam.  This sewer pipe was large enough to allow a man in a specially constructed sled to travel the length and repair any leaks in the piping.  I remember Henry Hammond did this job. 

"I worked for my father several summers at what has become Camp Julia Crowell of the Cleveland Girl Scouts.  There being a large spring on the property and not having air conditioning, Jim hired us to run a spring water pipeline from the spring to the roof of his house where spring water ran day and night to cool the house. Having sold the property to the Girl Scouts, he bought property on Medina Line Road and built another house, another large lake.  I worked there with my father and others.  This home held the first in-house elevator in Richfield. "

The Mason Oviatt Dam

The oldest building at Camp Crowell Hilaka is the former camp manager's house outside the fence on the south side. It was built in 1836 for Mason & Fanny Oviatt, and their eleven children.

Here is a tantalizing mention from the "History of Hinckley" by Judge RA Webber from 1933, page 10:

"Rocky River was rightfully named as the bed for the same for many miles is solid rock, the most conspicuous of which can be seen not far from its source in Berea, where the stream passes through the sandstone quarries, then forms the rapids in the north edge of the city.  The stream has been dammed for various purposes, since the advent of the white man.  As many as nine structures have been built from the river's source to Lake Erie, for either driving machinery or for pleasure.  The first one after leaving its source for a sawmill was north of the Center road known as the "Mason Oviatt Dam".  Not many years ago a gentleman enlarged the same for park purposes in connection with his summer residence.  The next was east of the "Whipp Ledges" known as the "Ward's Mill" where lumber was produced and grain ground. .............."

I I was wondering if Mason had been hired to build a dam somewhere in Hinkley or Berea.  But the second part of the citation - that a gentleman had enlarged the dam for his summer residence - makes me think that maybe the gentleman might have been James Kirby, even though he lived there year-round, not just in summer. We know from the tax records that Mason had a sawmill on his farm, but a mill can be sited on a running stream.  It doesn't need to have a dam.  But a mill using a mill pond with the water falling onto the top of a wheel ("overshot") is much more reliable and efficient than one with a wheel that dips into a stream. 

If Mason Oviatt had built a dam where the Kirby dam is, then Kirby didn't create the lower lake - as had been previously thought. It may be that there has been a lake there for over 170 years.

For more about the dam, as remembered by James Kirby's great-niece, click here.