For over a century, Cleveland’s Train Avenue has been the destination for illegal dumping on the city’s westside. Because of that, it would be impossible to discuss this road without first explaining its past.
Train Avenue wasn’t always called Train Avenue. It wasn’t even always a road…It was once a thriving stream of water called Walworth Run up until the mid-1800s.
What changed the fate of Walworth Run is simply put – industry. Slaughterhouses, breweries, oil refineries and other manufacturing, as well as the railroads, dumped waste and other runoff into Walworth Run.
Area residents, who used the waterway for their fresh water source, began filing complaints with the city over the odor and dire conditions of Walworth Run.
This continued for a couple decades until Cleveland City Council passed a measure to bury Walworth Run and turn it into an extension of the sewer system around the turn of the century.
Sections of it were then paved, and Train Avenue was born.