A river that caught on fire? Photo/Cleveland State University
Yes, indeed, and it happened more than once to the super-
polluted Cuyahoga River, which flows through Cleveland to Lake
Erie. It was a Time magazine story describing how the river
“oozes rather than flows” and focusing on a 1969 fire that
brought the Cuyahoga’s problem to light — and inspired a
movement that led to passage of the landmark Clean Water Act in
1972. But the fires had been occurring in the pollution floating
atop the Cuyahoga — and many other American rivers — for years.
The June 22, 1969 blaze that Time examined, which probably was
ignited by a railroad car carrying molten metal, was far from
the worst. In fact, the picture above, from the Cleveland State
University Library, comes from an earlier fire on Nov. 3, 1952.
The 1969 fire was over so fast that the local papers barely got
there in time to photograph the mop-up. Time’s piece is what
made it news and inspired a movement. Oh, those were the days,
huh? Tonight PBS presents a prog