Bluestone (Cleveland) Heights

At the Cedar Fairmount Street Fair this weekend, there was a terrific and exclusive tour of Bluestone Heights - the name that the Heights is known by, by geologists.  We had the chance to step into the gulch behind the lovely Tudor Deming House and learn about the geologic history of this area, built on Berea Sandstone, Euclid Bluestone and Cleveland Shale.   Here's a poem that was inspired by (some of) what I learned.

Bluestone Heights 

In the Late Devonian

this place that I call home

lay at zero latitude; Equator.

Before the vast tectonic plates

settled in their current place,

my city’s global longitude

was at the locus of Peru.   

Our Heights were once submerged below

an intercoastal sea. Its depths,

a muck and silted dead zone, left

no ancient fossil trace.  Instead,

it formed the hard-pressed, layered bed

of Euclid Bluestone, Cleveland shale

that sandwiches our neighborhood.  

This rock and shale beneath our feet,

was mined for sidewalks; and above,

capped the crenelated parapets  

of all the old apartment houses

up Cedar Hill and down my street.

 

Tweet me your thoughts about our local geology, what you are doing on vacation or anything about life in Cleveland Heights #htspoetweet - or leave a comment after this poem.