ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a story about the life history of a particular dam and reservoir, the IVEX Corporation Dam, which is located on the Chagrin River in northeastern Ohio. In Ohio, all the activities played a role in the transition from earliest non-Native American settlement in the late 1700s to established commerce and industry by the middle 1800s. The Chagrin River is located in northeastern Ohio. It's relatively small watershed drains into Lake Erie. The IVEX Dam is located at about the middle of the drainage basin, and two major tributaries join the river downstream of the dam. The first non-Native American individuals to settle the village of Chagrin Falls arrived in 1833, a time when the adjacent Cleveland metropolitan area had less than 1,000 individuals. Settled initially because of its potential for development of hydropower, small wooden dams were constructed immediately to power saw, grain, and paper mills.
