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Whiskey Island, Cleveland, Ohio


Whiskey Island is a peninsula at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River at Lake Erie in Cleveland, Ohio. Its current configuration was created in 1827 when the river's mouth was moved to its present location. The western half of Whiskey Island is occupied by the Cleveland Bulk Terminal and the eastern section is home to a marina and public park. It is one mile (1.6 km) long and one-third mile at its widest, bounded by Lake Erie to the north, West 54th Street on the west (roughly), and the Cuyahoga River to the south and east.

Whiskey Island was the first piece of solid land amid the swamps lining the river one-quarter mile down the Cuyahoga when Moses Cleaveland visited the area in 1796. Lorenzo Carter built his family farm on Whiskey Island, which got its name after a distillery was built on the site in the 1830s.

The area was settled, largely by Irish immigrants, when the Ohio and Erie Canal was constructed in 1825 and the river was rechanneled in 1827. In 1831 the Buffalo Co. and the New Harbor Co., representing investors from Buffalo and Brooklyn, purchased the Carter farm and divided its 80 acres (320,000 m2) into allotments along 22 streets. Manufacturing plants and docks were constructed. The Lake Erie Iron Works made steamboat shafts and railroad axles on the island and thirteen saloons were located in the area.

Cleveland's second hospital, the "pest house," was built on Whiskey Island following the Cholera epidemic of 1832. The Cleveland and Toledo Railroad (later the New York Central) ran its northern division through Whiskey Island "stopping at the river to ferry its passengers across the Cuyahoga because the city refused permission for the railroad to connect to the eastbound line".


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