About Cleveland Breakwall
The Cleveland Breakwall is five miles of federally-built stone breakwater that protects the entirety of Cleveland's harbor, from Edgewater in the west to Gordon Park in the east. It is the single largest piece of infrastructure on the Cleveland lakefront, built incrementally between 1884 and 1940, and remains the reason any of the shoreline is protected enough for recreation, shipping, or any of the waterfront developments of the past half-century.
History
Built by the Corps
The US Army Corps of Engineers began construction of the Cleveland breakwater system in 1884, after decades of petitioning by Cleveland's shipping industry for federal harbor protection. Lake Erie is shallow, small, and prone to short-period storm waves that can be more destructive than the longer swells of oceans; Cleveland's north-facing harbor caught the full force of winter northwesters, and had repeatedly been rendered unusable through the freezing months.
The breakwall was built in segments: the central harbor protection first (completed 1890), then the eastern extensions through Gordon Park (1906–1920), then the western extensions through Edgewater (1920–1940). The rock used is predominantly limestone quarried from the Lake Erie islands and Kelley's Island. Maintenance and reinforcement have continued essentially without interruption from the first construction through the present day.
The Outer Harbor
A Fishable Seawall
The breakwall created, behind it, the calm waters of what is now called the Cleveland Outer Harbor — the several square miles of lake that sit between the wall and the shore. Without the breakwall there would be no marinas, no Edgewater swim beach, no North Coast Harbor, no Burke Lakefront Airport (which extends onto reclaimed land in the outer harbor). Everything on the Cleveland lakefront depends on it.
The breakwall is also, in its own right, one of the most-fished structures on Lake Erie. Accessible by boat from any of the lakefront marinas, it holds walleye, smallmouth bass, yellow perch, and sheepshead along its five-mile length. The rock-pile habitat is exactly what Lake Erie's cool-water fish prefer.
Nearby on the Shoreline