Quick Facts

Doan Brook Facts at a Glance

Location: Doan Brook is one of the five greater “bluestone” brooks found in the Cuyahoga County of Northeast Ohio. Other direct Lake Erie tributaries include Dugway Brook, Nine Mile Creek, and Euclid Creek.

Length: 8.4 miles, along the north branch.

Watershed Area: 11.7 square miles, or 7,500 acres. About two-thirds of the watershed, or 7.5 square miles, is residential land use.

Parks: Shaker Parklands, Rudy Rodgers Memorial Scout Park (formerly Ambler Park), Wade Park, Rockefeller Park, the Cleveland Cultural Gardens and the Cleveland Lakefront Nature Preserve.

Lakes: Doan Brook feeds into four man-made lakes: Horseshoe Lake (also known as Upper Shaker Lake) at the confluence of the north and middle branches; Green Lake and Marshall Lake along the south branch; and Lower Shaker Lake, just downstream of the marsh wetlands where the north and south branches unite.

Lagoons: Wade Park Lagoon and the Rockefeller Park Lagoon lie adjacent to Doan Brook. These two lagoons are filled with City of Cleveland water, then drain into the stream.

Culverts: Doan Brook has two major culverts which channel approximately 1.3 miles of the stream underground. The University Circle culvert runs for almost a mile from the intersection of Ambleside and Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard to the west side of the Cleveland Museum of Art. A second culvert carries the brook for over half a mile, from the intersection of Martin Luther King, Jr., Boulevard and the CSX railroad tracks north under I-90, through the Cleveland Lakefront Nature Preserve, into Lake Erie.

Age: Over 15,000 years old. Doan Brook originated after the final retreat of the glaciers from Northeast Ohio.

Watershed Population: Approximately 45,530 people reside within its boundaries, according to the US Census 2020.

Common Watershed Wildlife

  • Pollution-tolerant macroinvertebrates
  • Fish – fathead minnows, green sunfish, common carp and shiners
  • Mammals – deer, chipmunk, squirrel, muskrat, opossum, raccoon, skunk, woodchuck
  • Amphibians and Reptiles- salamanders, frogs, toads and turtles
  • Birds – Over 217 species of birds were sighted along the upper Doan Brook since 1966, with more than 266 species documented at the Cleveland Lakefront Nature Preserve since 1980

Doan Brook Fact & Action Sheet