EDITOR’S NOTE: This is part of a weekly series on our region’s history coordinated by the Trumbull County Historical Society.

The area we now know as Bloomfield Township offered our ancestors thousands of acres of forests, rich soil, multiple streams and waterways, and plentiful wildlife.

Timber was cut, homes were built, farms were established, and this portion of the Western Reserve became a community. There was, however, a problem for many landowners in the central portion of the township. Running for several miles through the east-central portion of Bloomfield was a gigantic swamp. It was referred to by the locals as the Tamarack Swamp because of the countless tamarack trees (larix laricina) that grew throughout.

It abounded in huckleberries and was visited by thousands of passenger pigeons who came to feast on the berries. But unless one was fond of pigeon pot pies and huckleberry jam, what good was it? For decades, the owners of those swampy acres tried in vain to figure out a way to drain the swamp.

In the 1880s, landowners even petitioned the commissioners of Trumbull and Ashtabula counties for relief. Efforts to build a drainage waterway failed, partly because of the flatness of the area and disagreement as to where to channel the water. North, toward Rock Creek and the Grand River? South, to Mosquito Creek and the Mahoning River? West, and eventually into the Grand River?

It wasn’t until some Cleveland businessmen learned about the swamp that a solution was found. These businessmen knew that lying beneath the waters of the swamp, was a rich, black, highly organic soil that could be used for agriculture – for crops not normally grown in the surrounding clay soils. This soil was (and still is) referred to as “muck.”

Around the turn of the century, Cleveland businessman J.L. Free and his associates began buying up what many considered to be the worthless swampland. In 1913, a huge, steam powered dredge was imported by rail to Huckleberry (Huckleberry is a story for another day!) and employed to dig a ditch, 30 feet wide and varying in depths of 10 feet or more for about 7 miles. The ditch, referred to by many as Snyder’s Creek or the Dredge Ditch, was dug from south to north and connected the swamp to Rock Creek, the Grand River and Lake Erie. After the swamp began slowly draining, the area was cleared and leveled, lateral drainage ditches were built and around 1920, vegetable farming in the muck began.

For approximately the next 50 years, farms such as The Ohio Muck Farming Company, Orwell Gardens, Fisher Foods, Ruetenik Gardens, Birch Gardens, Smida Farms and Bloomfield Gardens, among others, grew, harvested, and shipped thousands of tons of vegetables to markets in especially the Cleveland and Pittsburgh areas. Bulb onions, green onions, celery, spinach, parsnips, turnips, several types of lettuce, asparagus, radishes, and more found their way from the mucklands of Bloomfield to dinner tables in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Did you, or someone you know, once work on the muck? Watch this space in the future when working on the muck will be described.