AKRON, Ohio — Summit Metro Parks has been conducting archaeological fieldwork in one of their parks in hopes of revealing more about the area’s past.
The dig site is located at the foundation of the former home of Victor and Esther Johnson on Honeywell Drive. The neighborhood was often called Wheelock Cuyahoga Acres and is now part of the Cascade Valley Metro Park.
Charlotte Gintert, the Summit Metro Parks’ cultural resource specialist, said this long-forgotten area holds a rich history of a small and distinctive community that brought together Black and white residents, making it unique for its time.
“This neighborhood was advertised that anyone could buy parcels of land, so it was not segregated in any way,” Gintert said. “As long as you can make the payments, you can own property. Every household was doing something a little bit different, but a lot of them were small farms. This was a small farm, one of the other ones we looked at in 2018 was also doing a large scale garden, a community garden, type set up. We are just trying to understand how these houses all related to each other, and also what was going on, on the property as well.”
The fieldwork was conducted by Summit Metro Parks cultural resources staff in collaboration with The University of Akron Department of Anthropology.
During the dig, one of the Johnson’s grandchildren, Tracy Beard, was in attendance.
She said growing up, her grandparents home was her and her five cousins’ favorite place in the world.
“We’ve been, the six of us grandchildren — there are only four of us now — have been talking about coming back to Honeywell Drive for 50 years,” Beard said. “This was the place we wanted to be. If we had a choice of where to be, it would be here.”
Beard said she found out they were doing this fieldwork in what she calls a moment of fate. She happened to Google Honeywell Drive, and articles regarding the work popped up. She then reached out to Summit Metro Parks to offer additional information about the area.
“I immediately called my cousins,” she said. “I called my aunt. I called my sister, and everybody has been up in arms about it, all excited about it.”
Beard said she was shocked that Summit Metro Parks found interest in her family’s history.
“Everyone was so excited and interested and wanted to know about the Johnsons and what went on down here,” she said. “I expected to find nothing, and then we come out here and there are actually steps, and you can see the basement. That just floored me. Thats wild that that is here, and we can see it.”
Summit Metro Parks will be working at this site for around two weeks this season and may come back next season.
“Even now, I think there are still a lot of things to be found here,” Beard said. “There was an awful lot of living that went on here.”
