Fire and water.
That's the short version of our 40-year ride down the Cuyahoga River following the infamous fire of June 1969.
And almost everyone knows this tarnished local tale that went national: molten sparks from a passing rail car set fire to oil- and chemical-soaked debris floating on the Cuyahoga on June 22, 1969. The brief blaze torched a railroad bridge near Republic Steel -- but branded Cleveland as a dirty city where water burns.
Time magazine said that summer that our river "oozes rather than flows." Johnny Carson and plenty of others joked about it. Randy Newman most famously wrote about it in a song.
Burn on, big river, indeed.
"You would think that people would forget about it after all this time -- but no," said Jim White, executive director of the Cuyahoga River Community Planning Organization as he stood near the site of the fire. "I had a visitor here from Russia recently and the first thing he wanted to see was where the river burned."
But the full story, like the Cuyahoga River itself, follows a more crooked and complex path.
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