Mt. Baldy is a unique Euclidian Place, well known from afar but rarely visited. Access is private and the precipice is dangerous. The place name has changed through the years. First called Long Point, it later became Old Baldy. More common now is Mt. Baldy. The actively eroding shale cliff provides a window onto the Late Devonian Age of Fishes sea bottom of 370 million years ago. Mt Baldy seems firmly in place, but it formed just 14,000 years ago and, in geological time, is rapidly mass wasting into Euclid Creek.

1. City of Euclid
Recreation
Program
Sunday, July 13, 2014, 5 pm
Roy Larick
Mt. Baldy
Euclidian Place walking tour
Utopia Beach
Arcadia Beach
Info: 216-289-8114 afinch@cityofeuclid.com
Explore Euclid’s Mt Baldy!
The Euclid Creek hogback
Google Earth aerial viewer
Celebrating
three years of
Euclidian Place
Led by
Bluestone
Heights
Euclid
History
Museum
USGS LiDAR underlay; Google Earth aerial viewer

2. About 14,000 years ago, two streams of glacial melt water broke through the Euclid Moraine.
They quickly carved Euclid Creek’s main and east branch gorges through the soft shale bedrock.
The Mt. Baldy bedrock peninsula remains between to encroaching meander cut banks.
Mt. Baldy
USGS LiDAR underlay; Google Earth aerial viewer
City of Euclid
City of Richmond Hts
Welsh Woods
½ mi
Euclid
Cemetery
Mt. St.
Joseph
© 2014
Bluestone
Heights
Lourdes
Shrine
Mt. Baldy at the confluence of Euclid Creek’s main and east branches

3. Mt. Baldy location
Mt. Baldy in the Bluestone Heights
bedrock sequence
Lying just below the Euclid bluestone, Mt. Baldy is part of the lower, steeper bedrock
landforms of the Portage Escarpment. On Cleveland’s East Side, Mt. Baldy is a prominent
landform of the Bluestone Heights.

4. Mt. Baldy in the Euclid landscape
In the local bedrock sequence, Mt. Baldy is a relatively high landform. It exposes two of
our more important local shale bedrock units, the Chagrin and Cleveland Formations. To
the south, Richmond Heights lies directly on the Euclid bluestone terrace. To the north,
the Euclid Moraine lies atop the terrace.

5. Looking northeast, up the Mt. Baldy hogback
Atop the feature, a cap of Cleveland Shale forms a flat summit (yellow).
The summit is quickly falling 145 ft into the creek.
Mt. Baldy, looking northeast
USGS LiDAR underlay; Google Earth aerial viewer
Euclid Creek’s east
branch slowly cuts
into the south
slope
As the branches
combine, their full
force quickly cuts
into the north
slope

6. Mt. Baldy shale cliff, looking E from Highland Rd
D. Lawrence
Chagrin Shale
Cleveland Shale
Mt. Baldy exposes 145 ft of bedrock deposited 370 million years ago,
in Age of Fishes seas. Just 21,000 years ago, the last glacial advance
ripped away the Euclid bluestone that usually caps the local Upper
Devonian sequence. Just 14,000 years ago, the last glacial retreat
deposited the Euclid Moraine (Chardon Hill) just north of Baldy.
Mt. Baldy
Age of Fishes and Ice Age features
D. Lawrence
Looking N from the cliff to the Euclid Moraine
Foreground: The Cleveland Shale cap rises
from 120 ft to 145 ft above the streambed.
Background: The Euclid Moraine sits
atop the escarpment north edge
(Chardon Rd).
The prominent Chagrin Shale cliff rises to
120 ft above the streambed.

7. The specimen likely came from the
quickly eroding Chagrin Shale cliff face.
Hence the genus name, Chagrinia.
Chagrinia enodis, 1960 find spot area (yellow)
USGS LiDAR underlay; Google Earth aerial viewer
Schaeffer (1962) CMNH Scientific Publications
In 1960, Raymond Jerzerinac
obtained a fossil fish in the
streambed east bank, 500’ beyond
the Old Baldy cliff face.
Euclid’s own ancient fossil fish
Chagrinia enodis
Holotype fossil for Chagrinia enodis, a coelacanth fish of the Upper Devonian

8. Redrawn from
Hannibal & Feldmann
The Explorer 27(1), 1985
Late Devonian paleogeography, 370 million years ago
During the Late Devonian Period, our region lay
near the Equator, in the Ohio Basin Sea. The
nearest land was 150-200 miles to the east.
Chagrinia enodis
In 1962, Bobb Schaeffer
published the find as, “A
coelacanth fish from the
Upper Devonian of Ohio.”
Scientific Publications of the
Cleveland Museum of Natural
History (NS) Vol. 1, No. 1.
Coelacanth fossils extend from more than 400
million years ago to 65 million years ago,
ending with Cretaceous extinction.
However, two living species are known:
Latimeria chalumnae (found 1938) and
Latimeria menadoensis (1999).
Coelacanths were numerous during the
Devonian Period (408-360 Ma) vertebrate land
transition. The order is crucial to understanding
the rise of land-dwelling tetrapods (four-legged
animals).
A. Fernandez Fernandez
Latimeria chalumnae, a living coelacanth

9. In that it has been too steep to build upon or
cultivate, Mt. Baldy has few historical records.
Euclid History Museum
Looking southeast from Euclid Ave to Mt. Baldy (center), 1935
Euclid History Museum
west tip
Euclid Moraine
Looking east from the Glenridge area, 1907
Yet in a historical landscape more open than
today, Mt. Baldy used to be an important
landmark in the lower Euclid Creek gorge.

10. Chestnut Hills. Henry Pickands inherited the wealth and work of
Pickands-Mather, pioneers in Lakes shipping and mining. Pickands
bought 25 acres atop Chardon Hill in 1902. He was elected Euclid
Village’s first mayor in 1903, and built this baronial Flemish-style
house in 1905. (EHS)
Chestnut Hills. Pickands hired engineer Whitford Jones to develop
electrical generation and water systems fueled by locally-tapped
natural gas. Estate-grown produce went to large freezers and
refrigerators. Kitchen and laundry appliances were fully electrified. The
house had a complete security system, including room call bells and
burglar alarm. The grounds held Northeast Ohio’s first concrete, in-
ground swimming pool—all by 1910! (EHS)

11. Chestnut Hills. About 1930, F.P. Ryan was hired to build a number of
buildings at Chestnut Hills, including this Cape Cod-style servants
quarters.
Chardon Hill. After following the st of the Euclid Moraine westward
from the Chagrin River, Chardon Rd descends the moraine to cross
Euclid Creek. The road cut through the moraine is at right, on the
Harms Winery property, now part of the Our Lady of Lourdes Shrine.

12. Mount St. Joseph. At Jeanne Pickands’ death in 1942, the Sisters of St. Joseph of St. Mark,
a Roman Catholic order of Alsatian origin, purchased the estate. The sisters began their
nursing home in Jeanne’s house, calling it Mount St. Joseph.
Chestnut Hills. After Henry
Pickands died in 1929, his wife,
Jeanne, kept on until 1938, when
she demolished the brick house
and built this Neo-Georgian-style
dwelling in its place.

13. City of Euclid
Recreation
Program
Sunday, July 13, 2014, 5 pm
Roy Larick
Euclid
History
Museum
Mt. Baldy
Euclidian Place walking tour
Utopia Beach
Arcadia Beach
Explore Euclid’s Mt Baldy!
The Euclid Creek hogback
Google Earth aerial viewer
Celebrating
three years of
Euclidian Place
Led by
Bluestone
Heights
Info: 216-289-8114 afinch@cityofeuclid.com