Long before canal boats and factory smoke, the Cuyahoga Valley belonged to the Lenape Nation, known as "the Grandfathers" of many Native Nations of the upper Ohio River Valley. The Hopewell Culture left their mark here as early as 200 AD, constructing the Everett Mound near what is now the park's interior. The Lenape, along with the Wyandot, Shawnee, Ottawa, and other nations, used Portage Path -- an eight-mile overland trail connecting the Cuyahoga and Tuscarawas rivers -- as the critical link between the Great Lakes and the Gulf of Mexico. Canoes could travel nearly the entire distance by water, save for this single portage. The 1795 Treaty of Greenville set the Cuyahoga as the boundary between indigenous lands and European settlement, and the 1805 Treaty of Fort Industry ceded the valley outright. Today, the Lenape Nation, commonly called the Delaware Nation, has its headquarters in Oklahoma -- thousands of miles from the valley that was once central to their way of life.

The Ohio and Erie Canal, built between 1825 and 1832, turned the Cuyahoga Valley from a sparsely settled wilderness into a vital transportation corridor linking Lake Erie to the Ohio River. Industry followed, and by the mid-twentieth century, the river had become a dumping ground for factory waste and raw sewage. Fires burned on its surface in 1952 and again in 1969 -- the latter igniting a national reckoning about environmental neglect. Local citizens organized, and the political push for protection culminated in the park's creation as a National Recreation Area in 1974. It was upgraded to full national park status on October 11, 2000. Along the way, the National Park Service inherited the Krejci Dump, a toxic waste site so contaminated it was designated a Superfund location. Litigation targeted Ford, General Motors, Chrysler, 3M, and others. Cleanup took nearly three decades, with restoration finally completed in 2015 -- a fitting metaphor for the valley's broader story of reclamation.

The valley's geology tells a story measured in hundreds of millions of years. The Berea Sandstone and Bedford Shale beneath the park were deposited in a river delta during the Lower Mississippian period, over 300 million years ago. Glaciers from the Wisconsin Ice Age carved the valley into its current V-shape, and the Defiance moraine -- the last stand of the glacial front in this region -- still protrudes south into the valley as far as the village of Peninsula. About one hundred waterfalls tumble through the park's ravines, formed where flowing water erodes the softer Bedford Shale beneath the harder Berea Sandstone. The tallest, Brandywine Falls, is the fourth-tallest waterfall in Ohio. At the Ledges, massive blocks of Sharon Conglomerate -- a formation that caps the highest hills -- have fractured into boulder fields riddled with talus caves, their cracks widened by frost into passages of uneven widths.

The park's spine is the Ohio and Erie Canal Towpath Trail, which follows the historic route where mules once towed canal boats loaded with goods and passengers. Stretching from Independence in the north to the Bike and Hike Trail in the south, the towpath is now popular with hikers, cyclists, and runners who share the path with great blue herons, beavers, and the occasional bald eagle. Three visitor centers dot its length: the Canal Exploration Center, the Boston Store (built in 1836 and once a warehouse, post office, and community gathering place), and the Hunt House, a restored nineteenth-century farm. Seasonally, the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad runs alongside the trail, carrying bicyclists and leaf-peepers from Rockside Road to Akron. The railroad is especially beloved in autumn, when the valley's maples, oaks, and sycamores blaze with color and the train provides front-row seats to one of Ohio's finest natural shows.

Where the Richfield Coliseum once hosted Cleveland Cavaliers basketball games and rock concerts, a grassy meadow now draws birdwatchers scanning for grassland species. The arena was demolished in 1999, and the site became part of the national park upon its 2000 designation. It is a quietly radical transformation: twenty thousand seats replaced by switchgrass and birdsong. Cuyahoga Valley is unusual among American national parks in blending natural, man-made, and private attractions. The Hale Farm and Village preserves nineteenth-century farming life, Blossom Music Center hosts outdoor concerts, and the 1930s-era Happy Days Lodge -- built by the Civilian Conservation Corps near Peninsula -- still stands as a reminder of the last time America invested this heavily in its public lands. In 2024, the park entered a "sister park" agreement with Dartmoor National Park in England, the first such partnership between the National Park Service and an English national park.