About Port of Cleveland
The Port of Cleveland is the working commercial harbor at the mouth of the Cuyahoga — the third-largest port on the Great Lakes by tonnage, handling roughly 13 million tons of cargo annually. It is also, improbably, the only port on the Great Lakes offering scheduled direct container service to Europe, via the Cleveland-Europe Express inaugurated in 2014.
History
Built on Iron Ore
The Port of Cleveland's importance was built, more than anything else, on iron ore. Beginning in the 1850s and accelerating through the century, ore from the Lake Superior ranges (Marquette, Gogebic, Mesabi) moved by bulk carrier down the lakes to Cleveland, where it was offloaded for the Youngstown and Pittsburgh mills. Pickands Mather & Company, the great Cleveland-based ore fleet, operated out of this harbor from its founding in 1883 through the late twentieth century.
The innovation of the Hulett unloader (invented by Clevelander George Hulett and first deployed at the Pennsylvania Ore Dock on this harbor in 1899) transformed bulk-ore handling worldwide. Before Hulett, unloading a lake freighter took a full day with dozens of men wielding shovels; after Hulett, it took a few hours with a crane-mounted clamshell bucket and two operators. The Hulett bridge remained in use on the Cleveland lakefront until 1992; the last of them was demolished in 2000.
The Modern Port
Ore, Steel, and Containers
Iron ore remains the port's primary bulk cargo — still supplying the steel mills of Cleveland-Cliffs and other surviving integrated steelmakers. Cement, stone, salt, and grain are other significant cargoes. The port operates Dock 20 and Dock 22 for bulk handling, and the Cleveland Bulk Terminal for iron ore.
The Cleveland-Europe Express, inaugurated in 2014, provides scheduled container service between the port and Antwerp, Belgium. Although modest by ocean-shipping standards (typically 8–10 sailings per year, each carrying roughly 1,000 containers), it is the only direct container service to Europe from any port on the Great Lakes, and it demonstrates the continued viability of the Great Lakes as a cargo-shipping ecosystem.
Public Face
A Limited Public Interface
The port is a working industrial operation and most of its footprint is inaccessible to the public. The Whiskey Island Trail passes along its western edge, offering the closest public view of active lake-freighter unloading in the city. The port's Port Control Center on the west bank of the Cuyahoga offers occasional public tours.
The Port of Cleveland is governed by the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority, established in 1968, which also operates the Cleveland Bulk Terminal and a range of port-development and public-finance functions in the broader region.
Nearby on the Shoreline