Raised Beaches Near Cleveland, Ohio 285 
engaged in a struggle for momentary support. This training has 
made them more valuable as American farmers than as laborers 
in factories. 
In still another direction, we find the lake ridges entering into 
life relations. For industrial purposes, such as building-blocks 
and concrete, they furnish a supply of gravel and sand; the exten- 
sive deposits of lake and glacial clays have afforded material for 
brick and tile. 
We find a specially interesting physiographic reaction in the 
influence of the lake-made physiograpJiy on railroad construction. 
In this area, the Cuyahoga was the largest river tributary to these 
lakes. Into the lake at all stages, the Cuyahoga built an extensive 
delta and as the lakes dropped from one stage to another, tribu- 
tary streams have incised this delta which is made up of sand, 
coarse and fine, and gravels of varying texture. It yields readily 
to stream work, consequently deep channels were developed. Its 
lack of stability near the walls of a stream is obvious ; for this reason 
railroads have always hesitated about constructing high bridges. 
All railroads centering at Cleveland have either east-west courses 
bordering the lake, or north-south courses paralleling the Cuya- 
hoga valley. The Lake Shore, as the name implies, belongs to 
the former class. One other east-west road, however, the Nickel 
Plate, approaching the city from the east, turns southward near 
the south side of the delta and descends through the valley of 
Kingsbury run to the level of the present Cuyahoga river in ascend- 
ing from which, on the western side, it uses another tributary 
valley. The Big Four uses this same valley west of the Cuyahoga. 
The railroads from the south, that is, the Baltimore & Ohio, 
Pennsylvania, Wheeling and Lake Erie, with the exception of the 
Pennsylvania, enter the city through tributary valleys cut in the 
old delta. The Pennsylvania, however, follows Mill creek to New- 
burg, then it skirts the Maumee beach for two miles and gradually 
descends the delta slope to the lake front; the Baltimore & Ohio 
has a more uniform gradient as it follows the edge of the river 
channel. 
But at the present time, a high level bridge is under construction; 
this is being built across the Cuyahoga on the delta-top level; it is 
a part of the recently located ‘‘Belt Line” which has become the 
property of the Lake Shore Railroad Company. From the stand- 
point of engineering, this is a hazardous venture, a fact which in 
