The Portage Path: Where Two Rivers Almost Touched
Near Akron, Ohio
Before Akron existed, before Ohio existed, this stretch of land was one of the most important footpaths on the entire continent. The Portage Path crossed the continental divide between two river systems: the Cuyahoga, flowing north to Lake Erie, and the Tuscarawas, flowing south toward the Ohio River. Anyone traveling between the Great Lakes and the Gulf of Mexico by water had to carry their canoe across this ridge. And for thousands of years, people did exactly that.
Portions of this path may have been worn into the earth thousands of years ago, first by animals, then by people. By the time Europeans arrived, it was regularly used by the Shawnee, the Lenni Lenape, the Wyandot, and other nations. French traders paddling the western fur routes knew it. British colonial agents used it. When the Americans began pressing into Ohio Territory, military surveyors recorded it.
The Treaty of Fort McIntosh in seventeen eighty-five formally designated the Portage Path as the dividing line between land open to European settlement and land reserved for Indigenous nations. That boundary held for only about twenty years before American expansion pushed further west, but the trail remained. It ran right through what would become the heart of Akron.
The word portage itself comes from the French word meaning to carry. And carry they did: everything from beaver pelts to diplomatic letters to weapons crossed this ridge on human backs.
Today, bronze arrowhead markers set into the pavement trace the old route through Akron's streets. Monuments along the trail honor those who used it for centuries before the first canal boat ever floated through. When you drive along Portage Path Road today, you are following the exact ridge those travelers followed. The watershed is unchanged. Only the travelers have changed.
