Summit Metro Parks is in the process of nominating the site of the area’s first racially integrated neighborhood — the former Wheelock Cuyahoga Acres (WCA) — to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Now part of Summit Metro Park’s Cascade Valley Metro Park, WCA was the only known Black rural community in Summit County and one of only a few in Ohio, said Charlotte Gintert, a cultural resources specialist for Summit Metro Parks.
Inhabited from the late 1940s to the 1970s, this rural development was located off Cuyahoga Street a block north of Sackett Avenue, about three miles from the Akron and Cuyahoga Falls downtown areas.
Today, it’s part of the Valley View and Schumacher Valley areas of the Cascade Valley Metro Park in Akron’s Merriman Valley neighborhood.
$10 down, $10 a month for a scenic development
In 1925, Odell K. Wheelock — a furniture manufacturing business owner in Cleveland who was considered one of the city’s wealthiest citizens — and Jerry C. Cranmer — a furniture store owner in Akron — purchased the land that Wheelock would later develop into Wheelock Cuyahoga Acres, according to extensive research done by Summit Metro Parks.
An ad for WCA first appeared in the Akron Beacon Journal on Oct. 1, 1948. It offered several acres of land on Honeywell Drive to “white or colored” people for $10 down and $10 monthly payments. The 80-acre development was advertised as scenic, with “good garden land, large shade trees, ravines and valley, close [to the] Cuyahoga River.”
Another ad from Oct. 7, 1948, listed 86-year-old Elsworth L. Honeywell as the development’s sales agent. Honeywell was considered Akron’s oldest and best-known active real estate agent; he was also the sales agent for the Goodyear Heights development, according to a June 7, 1942, Akron Beacon Journal article. His surname was used for the neighborhood’s main thruway, Honeywell Drive.
It’s not clear why Wheelock decided to create a racially integrated neighborhood. WCA allowed Black Americans to purchase a home, which was unusual for this time period — housing discrimination was common and legal until the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968.
Summit Metro Parks has owned the Schumacher Valley area since the 1970s. The organization purchased the former Valley View Golf Course in 2016 and began researching the WCA site the following year.
The Wheelock Cuyahoga Acres families
WCA was a small neighborhood. City directories from the time period list no more than eight houses. Gintert said its residents were working-class African Americans and white Appalachians.
Several homes were basement houses, Gintert said, which was a common way for low-income families to build a home during this time period. The basement foundation was built first and a roof was placed on top so that the family could live there while saving money to build the house up as they had the funds. Some of the other homes were huts or shacks.
To date, Summit Metro Parks has investigated three sites with the help of the University of Akron anthropology department, UA graduate students in the applied history and public humanities graduate program, and family members of two of the families who lived in WCA: the George “Conrad” and Willie Mae Prather family and the Victor and Esther Johnson family.
The Prathers purchased their property in 1953, having moved north during the Great Migration like thousands of other Black people looking to find better work opportunities and to escape racial violence perpetrated under Jim Crow laws. Conrad worked at Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., while Willie Mae was a housekeeper in a private home.
The two saved money and slowly built their dream home, which Gintert said was not a basement home. Unfortunately, they were never able to live in it before it was destroyed by an arsonist in August of 1976.
Summit Metro Parks uncovered the Prather home’s foundation and artifacts belonging to the family during archaeological excavations that began in 2018, according to a 2025 blog post. Cascade Valley Metro Park’s Prather Trail, which runs through the Wheelock neighborhood, is named for them.
Victor and Esther Johnson lived with their three children on Honeywell Drive, west of the Prathers, from the early 1950s until 1976, when they moved to Columbus. Victor was also employed at Goodyear, and Esther was a prolific gardener, according to their daughter, Victoria. Victoria and her daughters connected with the Metro Parks and shared their family history in 2023.
Gintert said the Johnsons’ home started as a basement home, and they built it up as they had the funds to do so.
The foundation of the Johnsons’ home will be visible from the future Honeywell Link Trail in the Schumacher Valley area of Cascade Metro Park.
The home of the Atkinsons
Another spot, the site of Ruby Lee and Edward Atkinson’s home, was surveyed by Zoe Brown, a UA applied history and public humanities graduate student for her capstone project this past summer. The Atkinsons never finished the basement house.
Edward Atkinson was originally from Alabama and worked at Firestone Tire & Rubber Co., according to his obituary in the Akron Beacon Journal on May 31, 1954. In her research, Brown found that Edward and Ruby Lee went by the surname “Atkinson,” but the rest of their family went by “Atkins.”
It’s likely that Ruby Lee Atkinson later rented the home to the Boden and Gray families. A torrential downpour flooded the house while the Boden family’s seven children were home, according to a July 9, 1957, Akron Beacon Journal article.
Ruby Lee Atkinson sold the property in 1958 to Sherman Schumacher, who purchased multiple properties in the area, Gintert said. A decade later, he donated the land to Summit Metro Parks, and it’s now known as the Schumacher Valley area.
A Nov. 15, 2010, Akron Beacon Journal article also recounted the experiences of a white family who lived on Honeywell Drive. Jack Collum grew up in a 40-foot-by-40-foot tar paper shack in the development. His father, Hershel Collum, was a welder at Babcox & Wilcox and built the shack in 1948. His wife Opal and five of their seven children lived in the one-room home, which had no running water or electricity for years.
Mary Miller, one of Jack’s sisters, saved up and bought six poles from Ohio Edison to have electricity and telephone service hooked up to the shack in 1952. Some of the telephone poles are still standing today.
The shack was torn down in the early 1960s, a year or two after the Collum family moved away.
It’s likely WCA was ultimately abandoned due to the difficulties caused by lack of access to city services, Gintert said.
Looking ahead
Summit Metro Parks continues to research and perform archaeological excavations. This summer, the parks system will work with University of Akron archaeology students to find the exact outline of the Prather house.
Ultimately, the goal is to have the neighborhood listed on the National Register as an archaeological landscape. The Metro Parks have been working with the State Historic Preservation Office to determine whether the site is eligible. Over the next year, the Metro Parks will submit a formal application and schedule site visits.
The historic neighborhood is considered an archaeological site because no one is currently living there and structures are no longer standing, Gintert said.
A site must meet at least one of the National Register’s four applicable criteria to be eligible.
Archaeological sites are typically eligible under criteria D: “property has yielded, or is likely to yield, information important in prehistory or history.”
Gintert believes the WCA site would also be eligible under criteria A: “property is associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of our history,” due to its ability to capture the Black experience in Akron during the Great Migration as a neighborhood where Black families could build and own their own homes.
Archaeologists don’t usually work with the recent past and are not normally able to talk to people who lived there, Gintert said. But in this case, they can talk to living people who remember this place.
“One of our main priorities is to keep looking for family connections … we have the opportunity to help them tell their story.”
Summit Metro Parks continues to look for and connect with people who lived in or have family members who lived in Wheelock Cuyahoga Acres. The Metro Parks can be reached by calling the administrative office at 330-867-5511 (weekdays, 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.) or submitting a contact form.