1969: The Cuyahoga River catches fire near Cleveland, Ohio. Unrestricted dumping of waste by local industries, leaving the river clotted with oil and other combustible effluent, is blamed.

Actually, the famous fire (famous mainly because Time magazine gave it big play nationwide) was simply the latest in a series of conflagrations that plagued the river between 1936 and 1969. But it was an effective symbol of the ravages of industrial pollution at a time when the nation’s consciousness was being raised in this area.

In the article accompanying the pictures, Time described the Cuyahoga as a river that “oozes rather than flows” and a place where a person “does not drown but decays.” Hyperbole, perhaps, but effective.

The fact is the Cuyahoga River was badly polluted and the factories and industries around Cleveland were the chief culprits. It’s very telling of the mindset of the time that Cleveland fire chief William Barry described the burning river as “a run of the mill fire.” Neither Cleveland daily treated it as major news.

But Time magazine did, and the image of a burning river next to a major American city was alarming. This incident played a significant role in the passage of the Clean Water Act and the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Source: Wikipedia, Pratie Place

Photo: A fire tug fights flames on the Cuyahoga River near downtown Cleveland, Ohio, where oil and other industrial wastes caught fire June 25, 1952. (AP)

This article first appeared on Wired.com June 22, 2007.