19691776 Club
Cleveland's Cuyahoga River burns again; this time, Mayor Stokes makes the city watch
An oil slick sparked by a passing rail car chars a railroad bridge for roughly $50,000 in damage, but Stokes walks reporters to the bank and the river that "oozes rather than flows" lands on the national front page.
Cleveland's Cuyahoga River had caught fire at least thirteen times before June 22, 1969, and nobody much cared. This time, Mayor Carl Stokes walked reporters to the riverbank and made sure they looked. The fire itself — sparked when a passing rail car ignited an oil slick — was modest by the river's own grim standards, causing roughly $50,000 in damage to a railroad bridge before it burned out. But the image Time magazine ran alongside its scathing dispatch, borrowed from the far larger 1952 blaze, reached readers who had never smelled the Cuyahoga, and the river that "oozes rather than flows" became the face of American water pollution…
