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THE DAVEY BULLETIN
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January/February 2018
FROM THE ARCHIVES
FORGOTTEN D.I.T.S. TRADITION OF SWIMMING ICY CUYAHOGA
It's well known that, before the Great Depression, the Davey
Institute of Tree Sciences (D.I.T.S.) fielded athletic teams to
compete with local colleges and high schools in a variety of
sports, including fencing, wrestling, basketball and gymnastics.
It seems D.I.T.S. also fielded an impromptu swim team,
which tackled the icy waters of the Cuyahoga River once
a year in January.
For freshmen attending D.I.T.S., swimming the Cuyahoga
River in the middle of Ohio's brutal winters had become a
ritualistic rite of passage each New Year's Day. The "annual
swim" as described in a January 1930 issue of The Davey
Bulletin drew crowds of onlookers to downtown Kent's Main
Street Bridge, which gave them a perfectly elevated vantage
point to watch the bank-to-bank crossing.
"The most outstanding thing was that it was a mild day
and that is unusual for January 1, in this corner of ye olde
Buckeye state," the Jan. 15, 1930, issue of the Bulletin tells
of one such crossing. "We do not wish to detract from the
glory of the performers, but those who have been around
The Cuyahoga River in downtown Kent, north of the Main Street
Bridge, approximately where D.I.T.S. students once swam across the
river as a rite of passage in the early 1900s. Back then, this section of
the river was a calm, deep dam pool; not the swift-moving river today
enjoyed by paddlesport enthusiasts.
for a while say they were fortunate they didn't have to
break the ice."
Prior to 1954, when the Davey Technical Service Center
opened, classes for D.I.T.S. were held on the west bank of
the river in a building on Gougler Avenue. The swim likely
took place just behind the classroom building. And prior to
2005, when the city of Kent rerouted the river around the
Stone Arch Dam, the dam pool would have extended up river
well beyond the crossing point, providing for a much wider,
deeper and longer swim than one might encounter today.
It's unclear when the tradition ceased, but it could have
continued as late as 1954, when classes were relocated
to the new technical center on Bryce Road away from
downtown Kent – and the river.
