The way the story goes, the Summer of 69 was when all hell broke loose in Cleveland.
It was the summer the Cuyahoga River caught on fire. Choked with industrial effluent and chemicals it burst into flames. It is said that this is the event that birthed the Clean Water Act and the Environmental Protection Authority. America was galvanised by this shocking event. Things started to change.
But the thing is, this was not the first time the Cuyahoga River had burst into flames. We feel like the most obvious question is, how does a river which is by definition “a large natural stream of water” burst into flames?! Shouldn’t the water act as some sort of fire deterrent?
But water was no match for the horrors contained in the Cuyahoga River.
When surveyors first came across this river in 1796 they knew they’d hit gold. It was connected to one of America’s largest lakes and was an excellent shipping route. Cleveland was born and industry boomed. And back then, as well as being shipping routes, rivers were industry's drain. Flush it all down the river and it’s someone else’s problem. And so, the Cuyahoga River quickly became the dump for all manner of lovely things. Waste from oil refineries, paint factories, steel mills, coking plants and slaughterhouses. Raw sewage. Trash. If you had something you didn’t want, into the river it went.
It got pretty bad, bubbling away like a deadly stew. So bad that it was commonly accepted that if you fell into the river, you should get yourself to hospital, fast. With reports like this, it’s not a stretch to believe that it liked to spontaneously burst into flames. Well, maybe not spontaneously, but it didn’t take much to ignite that bad boy. The thing is, that fire in 1969 was not the first time the river had caught alight. The river had been prone to catching alight at least nine times before 1969. And that fire in 1969, well, almost no one noticed.
So how does a run-of-the-mill river fire in a badly polluted river that almost no one noticed transform into such an environmentally revolutionary moment?
The events that transpired say something deeper about how we look at the world, and what it takes to get us to change.
SOURCES:
Smithsonian Magazine: The Cuyahoga River Caught Fire at Least a Dozen Times, but No One Cared Until 1969
David and Richard Stradling’s Perceptions of the Burning River: Deindustrialization and Cleveland's Cuyahoga River in Environmental History
Cleveland's Cuyahoga River caught fire 50 years ago. It inspired a movement.
51 Years Later, the Cuyahoga River Burns Again - Outside Online
Oral Histories of the 1969 Cuyahoga River Fire - Belt Magazine
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To come
