The Cuyahoga Valley National Park

The Cuyahoga Valley National Park (CVNP) is where much of the THE TOWPATH is set, and for good reason: It’s stunningly beautiful; the crowning emerald jewel in a ring of forested park systems surrounding the Cleveland, Ohio area that are collectively known to locals as the “Emerald Necklace.” Cleveland, Akron, and the surrounding cities and communities (including the fictional Portage Falls) are much greener than many travelers to the area might expect, and such green spaces offer a welcome and convenient destination for hikers, walkers, bicyclists, and anyone craving some rejuvenating nature bathing.

While smaller than most US national parks, the CVNP still boasts 50 square-miles of lush river valley in which to get lost. As it happens, getting lost in this place is precisely what Libby Jaite likes to do, as you’ll find out, armed with her backpack stuffed with her sketchpad, colored pencils, binoculars, and other essentials. Most notably (at least, for this story), the CVNP is bisected by a long stretch of the popular and well-trodden Ohio & Erie Canal Towpath Trail, which, as you might have guessed, is the inspiration for this story’s title.

While you’ll get a better history lesson from the website dedicated to the iconic nearly-100-mile-trail, suffice it to say The Towpath Trail earned its name from the fact that mules would pull canal boats up and down the now abandoned Erie canal using a dirt trail along the canal’s bank in the 1800s and early 1900s. The trail was a prime method of transporting (well, towing) passengers and goods between the cities of Canton, Akron, and Cleveland. The existing trail, now paved in either asphalt or crushed limestone depending on where you are, attracts walkers, runners, and bicyclists, and still charts a similar path, in many places running adjacent to the old canal which is now mostly reclaimed by nature with its ancient and defunct locks to the East and the meandering Cuyahoga River to the West.

You might not imagine a brutal, time-traveling killer chasing you down this gorgeous, forested path. But buckle up, because in The Towpath, you’re in for the ride of your life. Or is it…for your life?

portage falls

Nestled atop the southeastern rim of the Cuyahoga Valley, this fictional midwestern town of about 50,000 mostly middle-class residents abuts the city of Akron to the South and is roughly 20 minutes from the city of Cleveland to the North. Established in the early 1800s, the area drew several industry-minded prospectors due to the Cuyahoga River’s prominence and accessibility, as well as the presence of a series of waterfalls that spilled toward the Cuyahoga Valley from its southern escarpment. The falls of course influenced the town’s eventual name, Portage Falls, and provided a stable energy source for manufacturing and milling. While the Falls part of the name is obvious, Portage comes from the fact that the local Native American tribes would portage (or carry) their canoes from just south of the first waterfall, to a place lower in the valley, clear of the waterfalls and their rushing rapids, rejoining the river in these calmer spots. The path cut between both points became their portage path, where the town exists today.

Portage Falls is still taking advantage of its namesake series of waterfalls, having erected a generous stretch of hotels, businesses, restaurants, and breweries along each bank where the river slashes central downtown—the most coveted places standing sentinel directly above the largest and southernmost waterfall. Just a stone’s throw away from the main waterfall is the Portage Falls free-standing clock tower and the town square, which is an open space bracketed by multi-storied brownstone buildings and paved with auburn cobblestone. It’s also where residents come every weekend in the summer to tip back plastic cups brimming with beer while swaying to the live music thrumming at the Rockin’ on the River festival, which takes place in the square.

While Rockin’ on the River, in addition to other signature festivals, often gets the attention—particularly in the summer months—none can rival what happens to the town on Friday nights in the Fall when the Portage Falls Panthers High School football team takes the field at Panther Stadium. Situated three blocks north of the town square and nestled amidst rows of colonial-styled homes, it’s the place to be Friday night, weather be damned, and the entire town seemingly crams itself into the modest stadium, the spillover watching from the streets or even from the rooftops of a few enterprising residents’ homes (those spectating from that vantagepoint usually drunk as hoot owls by kickoff). It’s from within this bursting venue that residents can watch Owen Porter sprint down the sidelines for yet another touchdown or make a diving interception that thwarts yet another opponent’s drive.

From the city centers of the square and the high school—including Panther Stadium—the town fans out to an expanse of gridded residential neighborhoods and subdivisions with churches, schools, small businesses, and pizza shops sprinkled in. One such subdivision is Sand Run Estates, which you’ll get to know quite well.

sand run estates

The Sand Run Estates subdivision might be new by Portage Falls standards, but that doesn’t mean it’s exactly new. The last residential stronghold before the town acquiesces to the wilds of the Cuyahoga Valley, Sand Run Estates doesn’t boast a home more recently built than the 1960s. And if you’re a buyer that’s in the market for a single-family home, flip a coin, and you’ll get one of two choices of house styles in the neighborhood: A 1950s-era bungalow—usually with large aluminum awnings—or a 1960s-era all-brick ranch.

A bungalow is the style of home in which you’ll find Mildred O’Malley, aka Gram, the maternal grandmother of Owen and Aaron Porter. The home is also Aaron’s base of garbage-picking operations. Sand Run Estates has proven to be an absolute treasure trove of cast-offs, given many of the residents are seniors whose adult children must often pry their parents’ worldly possessions from their arthritic fingers only to impatiently consign those possessions—often antiques—to the neighborhood’s generously-sized tree lawns (or “devil strips,” depending on where you’re from). Aaron’s all too happy to clean up, as he’s developed quite the knack for seeing the potential value in things and on which he can turn an easy profit on eBay or Facebook Marketplace.

If you decide to tag along with Aaron during one of his Junk Night crusades, you’ll notice as you pull out of 537 Juneville Drive the many towering oaks and silver maples that greet you along each side of the street—their heights further accentuated by the low-slung homes. Pedal up Juneville and hang a right onto Maplewood Drive, and you’ll observe numerous intersections that you’ll cross; those crossing streets ending in large swooping cul de sacs. Aaron very much appreciates these looping dead ends as they make his garbage-picking rounds more efficient and glanceable as he rides Shelby and her tow-behind trailer across Maplewood, which is one of two primary cross streets in the neighborhood.

And as you cruise further along Maplewood, you can’t help but notice the dead end straight ahead, where Sand Run Estates seems to come to an abrupt halt. However, not quite. At the center of the dead end is a narrow footpath bracketed by 6-foot-tall hedges. The path leads to a place near and dear to Aaron’s heart, The Courts.

The courts

The Courts is the park at the end of Maplewood Drive in Sand Run Estates, which somehow earned and retained its nickname (well, its only name) despite not having a court of any kind thanks to the Homeowner Association’s funding drying up several years ago.

It’s too generous to call the two-acre spit of land at the Cuyahoga Valley’s eastern rim a park. With the overgrown baseball diamond and rusted backstop fence its only nod toward athletic or leisurely pursuit, The Courts is instead the perfect escape for teens to conduct all sorts of debauchery: Drug-related, sexual, or otherwise. A visitor to The Courts on a weekend morning could be treated to any number of visual pleasantries, of which I will spare you the details here (the book does not spare those though—you’ve been warned!). Aaron often suspects that old Mr. Ipser, a senior resident of the neighborhood and unofficial caretaker of The Courts must clean up those items when tending to the park’s mangy grass, because they always seem to go away after a couple of days.

But The Courts serves a gateway that goes beyond simply that of teenaged rebellion. It’s a gateway to the beauty of the Cuyahoga Valley, albeit a potentially dangerous one. It wasn’t until Aaron was twelve that Gram would even allow him to go to The Courts with his older brother, Owen, and his friends. There are two rules about The Courts. The first rule is to stay away from the Sand Run Caves, a network of natural sandstone grottos set into the eastern cliffside of the CVNP’s gorge about a mile southwest of the neighborhood. One could easily get to the caves using the switchback trail that descends from the southwest corner of The Courts before it links up with the Ohio & Erie Canal Towpath Trail. The treacherous cliffside trails near the caves are to blame for many deaths—mostly drunken or high teenagers—and that section of park has been closed to the public for a decade. But Gram knows that no signage or gate could stop the rebellious youth from exploring.

Hence, rule number two: Any trips the boys take into the heavily forested valley via The Courts must be together or in a group, and in such cases, they are to only use the well-groomed and gentle switchback, which of course takes forever to descend. If Gram’s to be believed, a descent into the valley using any other method will result in certain death. But just this past spring, Aaron found a more efficient way when his garbage pickings were slim, and he knew that Gram wouldn’t be expecting him home anytime soon. That night, he’d come upon a small footpath accessible from the northwest corner of The Courts and descended it as far as he’d dared, finding that it also intersected with The Towpath Trail. Will this discovery come into play in the story? You’ll have to get the book to find out.

brandywine village

The fictional Brandywine Village has the distinction of being the only hamlet to interrupt the CVNP’s 50-square-miles of forest and river valley in The Towpath. And it doesn’t just interrupt, it’s smack dab in the middle of the park. In real life, northeast Ohio residents will know that this setting is inspired by Peninsula, a quaint little village that straddles the Cuyahoga River, its main thoroughfare (Route 303) flanked by little walk-up shops where you can go antiquing or peruse work from local artists and creatives. The village is also home to a couple of this author’s favorite restaurants, The Winking Lizard Tavern and Fisher’s, both of which offer a welcome respite and cold beverages after a vigorous bicycle ride on The Towpath Trail, or a hike along the nearby Buckeye Trail.

In the book, the little village might become perceived as being more than just a well-earned respite from physical exertion. It could be a respite from something else, something more ominous and deadly.

Blake-Littlefield Salt Mines

Did you know that there are actual mines beneath a Great Lake that are nearly 2,000 feet underground?! I didn’t either until I was in my twenties, and this factoid still makes my nerd flags stand at attention. Inspired by the actual Cargill Salt Mines, which encompass 16-square-miles of cavernous tunnels and lodes beneath Lake Erie, the fictional Blake-Littlefield Salt Mines were first excavated in the early 1960s by the Blake Deicing company, for decades the top producer of salt used to treat the slick roads during harsh northeast Ohio winters. Over time, the production only grew, as tunnel by tunnel, the mine system stretched out and along the shore of Lake Erie. Much of this growth can be attributed to local businessman Kevin Littlefield’s involvement and eventual investment and co-ownership of the operation in 1993, his experience in manufacturing and industrial automation a catalyst for scalable, sustainable growth—in both production and revenue.

The company eventually changed its name to Blake-Littlefield Deicing in 1998 as it developed another mining operation near Eastlake, Ohio. While Littlefield’s reputation for being innovative and profit-driven only grew and solidified over the years—even enabling him to get involved in the national technology sector—certain aspects of his mining operations began to…well, slip. Like a software application that invests heavily on new features, innovations, and automated experiences, some things might get sacrificed—for instance, cybersecurity. What security oversights might happen with an extensive mining operation that’s fairly easy to access from its surface operation and offices that can be found on Whiskey Island, a small peninsula that’s easily accessible from Cleveland’s Edgewater Metropark? Furthermore, can you imagine if the owner’s son, who happens to be a calculated troublemaker, gets access to his father’s security credentials on a weekend night when the operation just so happens to be suspended due to an investigation by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources? And just what are they investigating and why?

wayne national forest

CVNP isn’t the only national park or forest featured in the story. The other is Wayne National Forest, nestled in Appalachian foothills of southeastern Ohio, where The Redeemer has decided to take up refuge between her more distant excursions while keeping her hunting skills sharp, to the misfortune of many deer and the occasional hare. It’s also a place where she conducts other, darker business, which I won’t give away here. Suffice it to say, the wilderness is her shroud, and like Libby Jaite, she wears it well and is certainly not someone you want stalking you through such a wild and untamed environment.

Read more about the Wayne National Forest.