Down by the Old…Burning River

The Cuyahoga River in Cleveland burns in 1969

On June 22, 1969 sparks from a passing freight train ignited a thick scum of oil and gunk that built up around the pilings of a railroad trestle across the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio.  The results were impressive.  Within minutes the fire spread from bank to bank and downriver.  Roaring red flames licked up into the air five stories high and thick black smoke enveloped the city and raised high into the air.  The fire burned intensely for about half an hour and died down only when the oil slick was consumed. 

The fire made national headlines, was covered by all of the TV evening news broadcasts, and became a cover story exposé on industrial pollution in Time Magazine.  But the astonishing thing was that it was not the first, most damaging, or deadliest fire on the Cuyahoga.  The river, with its banks lined by heavy industrial plants, for 100 years, all discharging their waste unimpeded and untreated into it, first burned in 1868.  Including the June fire, it was ablaze at least 12 more time, more than once a decade.  A fire in 1912 killed at least 5 people.  One in 1952 caused over $1.3 million in pre-inflation damage.  The latest fire singed a couple of railroad bridges, but most of the damage was to Cleveland’s reputation.  

The Burning River quickly became part of modern urban folk lore. The local underground newspaper was the Burning River Times.  Several songs were written, the most well-known by Randy Newman:

Burn On

There’s a red moon rising

On the Cuyahoga River

Rolling into Cleveland to the lake

There’s a red moon rising

On the Cuyahoga River

Rolling into Cleveland to the lake

There’s an oil barge winding

Down the Cuyahoga River

Rolling into Cleveland to the lake

There’s an oil barge winding

Down the Cuyahoga River

Rolling into Cleveland to the lake

Cleveland, city of light, city of magic

Cleveland, city of light, you’re calling me

Cleveland, even now I can remember

‘Cause the Cuyahoga River goes smokin’ through my dreams

Burn on, big river, burn on

Burn on, big river, burn on

Now the Lord can make you tumble

Lord can make you turn

The Lord can make you overflow

But the Lord can’t make you burn

Burn on, big river, burn on

Burn on, big river, burn on

—Randy Newman

Industry along the river.

Cleveland’s location as deep water port on Lake Erie, river connections to the rich Ohio agricultural heartland, and as a major rail hub all facilitated the city’s rapid growth.  With easily access to taconite iron ore and lumber from the Minnesota Iron Range and North Woods by ship and coal and oil from Pennsylvania, heavy industry took root early and flourished.  It was an early home to many pioneering automobile manufacturers and remained an important parts supplier to the industry.  Locomotive, heavy industrial equipment, stoves, and other appliances were just some of the items produced.  John D. Rockefeller incorporated Standard Oil there and built the largest oil refinery in the east there.

The population swelled, first with farm boys, and then with European immigrants.  During and after World Wars I and II Appalachian Whites and Southern Blacks added to the mix, all fodder for the insatiable factories.  By 1950 Cleveland was the fifth largest city in the US.

The Cuyahoga snakes its way across the Mud Flats in this 1937 aerial photograph.  Note the gleaming downtown towers rising just above the center loop.

Most of that industry was built on the broad delta of the Cuyahoga as it snaked its way to Lake Erie that the locals called the Mud Flats.  The factories and mills sucked up huge amounts of river water for their operations then discharged it back into the river contaminated by oil, grease, chemicals of every sort, and heavy metal residue.  The river was an open sewer emptying in a once pristine Lake Erie.

By 1969 the city, which rode to prosperity and prominence on its industry, was just beginning to feel the beginning of the long decline which would accelerate in the ‘70’s—the era of the Arab oil boycott, stagflation, and the beginning to the exodus of industrial production in the U.S. for foreign shores.  It became the first American city to enter into a financial default on federal loans since the Great Depression. By the late ‘80’s Cleveland was a poster child for the Rust Belt, complete with abandoned factories—many still heavily contaminated themselves—a shrinking population, and grim prospects.  Looking back, many local folk would identify the river fire as the beginning of the process.

The oil scum on the river as it piles up near a bridge.  A reporter dared dip his hand into it.

But the fire did fuel rising concerns about the environment nationally.  Public agitation led to Congressional hearings and the enactment of the National Environment Protection Act (NEPA) which was signed into law on January 1, 1970 by Richard Nixon.  At the first Earth Day demonstrations that spring, posters of the Burning River were a common symbol of the degradation of the environment.  Under the provision of the act Nixon would go on to create the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) which would make regulation of water pollution a high priority. 

The Clean Water Act of mandated that all rivers U. S. be hygienic enough to safely allow swimming and edible fishing by 1983.  Since the 1969 the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District has invested over $3.5 billion in the purification of the river and the development of new sewer systems.  Over the next thirty years the City of Cleveland will further endow over $5 billion to the upkeep of the waste water system. 

Although the rapid demise of industry reduced the continued introduction of pollutants, the clean-up and recovery of the Cuyahoga has been a great success story.  There was never again another major river fire, and river is now home to about sixty different species of fish.  Almost all of the old factories are out of business and many of the buildings have been torn down and the contaminated Mud Flats on which the stood have been partially restored thanks to Federal Brown Fields funding.

Downtown Cleveland and the Cayahoga River front today.

Today, Cleveland has a population of only 313,000 compared to a high of 914,000 in 1950.  It has rebranded itself as a regional center for commerce, technology, communications, and the arts.  Led by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Lake front redevelopment, it has even become a tourist attraction.

And those tourists can ride excursion boats on the Cuyahoga along tree lined shores.

Despite these successes, the State of Ohio is firmly in the hand of a right wing Republican government who’s expressed allegedly libertarian ideology calls for the dismantlement of all of the regulations that made the recovery possible and the slashing of infrastructure investment to maintain Cleveland’s now aging sewer and water treatment facilities.  Like their ideological allies across the country, they advocate re-industrialization base on unrestricted exploitation of the environment and a domestic wage base driven down to Third World levels. 

If they have their way, we may not have seen the last of the Burning River.