On June 22, 1969, the seemingly impossible turned possible when the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland caught fire.
The images of the Cuyahoga – pronounced ‘KY-ə-HOG-ə‘, shocked and horrified the nation, but it actually marked the thirteenth time it occurred in its recorded history.
Scientists concluded the river’s status as officially dead due to a lack of oxygen vital for fish and plant life to survive. This event, along with a catastrophic oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara, helped ignite our country’s interest in environmentalism on a macro stage.
It came at the heels of the civil rights movements of the 1950s and 60s, where large populations of people marched nationally, championing for the rights of all men and women to be equal. And, that same energy appeared to carry over in the environmental sector heading into the 70s.
The aftermath of those tragedies was the precursor to the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970. It influenced President Nixon and Congress to proactively pass the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in December of that year. It also became the vehicle to pass the Clean Water Act of 1972, among a host of other environmentally friendly initiatives.
As it turns out, the image Time Magazine published which fueled most of the emotion about the dreadful state of the Cuyahoga, wasn’t even taken from that day. Rather, it was from a previous and more serious fire in 1952 that caused $1.5 million in damages. Yet, despite its evident decades of instability, that incident didn’t attract any national coverage at all.
Clearly, when water burns people take notice. But, why did it take thirteen times before widespread outrage harnessed the collective energy to take action, and hold those accountable who financially gained for its demise?
Furthermore, the national media heavily focused on the Cuyahoga’s dire conditions – and deservingly so, but it made one believe this problem was unique to Cleveland.
When in fact, waterways all across the United States – the Rouge River in Detroit, Lincoln Creek in Milwaukee, and the Buffalo River in Buffalo, among others, all suffered from the same illness exploited on the Cuyahoga.
Regardless, the demand was ripe, and the popularity for more regulation at the Federal level grew. And, thus, a movement to protect our environment from the long-term effects caused by untamed industrialization was on its way.
You have to have thick skin to be from this place. We’re an easy target for mainstream mockings on late night television due to our city’s well publicized hardships.
For Clevelanders, those shortcomings of our past have strangely seemed to define us. It’s given us an inferiority complex that’s passed down from generation to generation like a family heirloom.
But, to fully comprehend how this reputation formed, one must revisit history and the significance Cleveland played in the industrialization of the United States.
The year is now 1849, and Cleveland’s total population is right around 17,000 residents. The Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati (C, C & C) railroad was just completed, and rapid development of other railways connecting into larger cities such as New York, Chicago and St. Louis, turned Cleveland into a major player as an industrial capital.
This attracted hundreds of thousands of European migrants, who left their native lands in pursuit of the American dream, and the possibilities it presented for a perceived better quality of life. And, Cleveland appeared to offer that promise of hope.
Documented fires on the Cuyahoga occurred in the years 1868, 1883, 1887, 1912, 1922, 1936, 1948, and of course 1952 and 1969. So, this was nothing new to Clevelanders. Pollution appeared to be the inevitable cost of doing business – a necessary evil of sorts for a booming local economy and a city population still growing.
When the railroads became the way industry moved goods across the country more efficiently, they were often positioned at or near our lakes and rivers. The railroad entryway into downtown Cleveland ran across and alongside an approximate 2.5 mile stream called Walworth Run.
Walworth Run flowed directly into the Cuyahoga River. It was also the primary source of fresh water for the area’s near westside residents, most of whom were low-income, immigrant laborers of the nearby mills and factories.
By the 1870s, these same locals grew increasingly upset over the negligent conditions of Walworth Run caused by the intentional dumping of waste and other runoff produced from the slaughterhouses, breweries, oil refineries and railroads.
It took a couple decades of continuous protest, until Cleveland City Council passed a measure in the 1890s that would fund a plan to bury Walworth Run and turn it into an extension of the city’s sewer system.
Cleveland’s population continues to soar. By 1910, with an estimated 560,000 residents, Cleveland earns the moniker – 6th City, becoming the sixth most populated metropolis in the U.S., and home to some of the wealthiest families in the country.
Many of those families built expensive properties on the city’s inner east-side along Euclid Avenue, known as Millionaire’s Row.
One of those properties was owned by John D. Rockefeller. Yes, that Rockefeller – the oil tycoon and industrialist, who monopolized on his creation of the Standard Oil Company (in 1870), and became the country’s first billionaire by 1916. That’s billionaire with a “B”. In the year 1916.
One of his many oil refineries operated near Mill Street (now called West 30th Street) located at the Walworth Run.
Map 1 – Walworth Run in 1868 with Mill Street circled (red) to show where John D. Rockefeller’s oil refinery operated.
Map 2 – Train Avenue in 2024 with W. 30th Street circled to show where it would be today.
So, the solution to Walworth Run’s problems was to bury it, and hopefully the problems would be buried along with it. In 1906, sections of it were then paved, and that became the birth of a road called Train Avenue.
But, because city officials were only addressing a partial symptom to a much larger illness, Train Avenue inherited many of the same problems Walworth Run experienced.
Years before plans to convert Walworth Run were concocted, local newspapers periodically wrote accounts of its incremental, but steady, decline. Regular warning shots were printed about the lack of safety – both environmentally, as well as an increase in robberies, rapes and other violent crime all occurring at or near Walworth Run.
It should have come as no surprise that even though the landscape may have changed, these same collective crimes would continue once Train Avenue was born.
Cleveland’s population climbed to 914,000 in 1950, but in the five decades that followed (1950-2000), Cleveland proper lost nearly one half of its residents (914, 808 in 1950 to 478,403 in 2000). The cause of this was primarily due to massive job layoffs after the closings of factories and manufacturing plants.
Some of those families moved to the suburbs. Others fled to parts of Ohio that were growing, such as Columbus in central Ohio. While, others left the state altogether.
This population loss continued into subsequent decades, where our current total now sits just above 372,000 per the 2020 U.S. Census. Within one 70 year lifetime, the city of Cleveland lost over half a million residents.
If unbridled industrialization put the city of Cleveland on the map as a destination for opportunity; Deindustrialization nearly shot the fatal bullet in the heart of what remained.
This mass exodus became easier once the construction of the interstate highways accelerated in the 50s. It became known as “white flight” – a term generally used to describe the uprooting of mostly caucasian middle-upper class households, escaping the decay of struggling urbanized cities ravaged by industry for the clean air and open land the suburbs offered.
This left the most socially and economically vulnerable to fend for themselves.
Have you ever heard of the expression – ‘the wrong side of the tracks’? Its origin comes from the understanding that when the railroads were built through towns, they were designed so the poor were in the direct path of the wind blowing.
The phrase has become synonymous with neighborhoods who experience higher rates of poverty and crime. But, more telling is how one’s social and economic status dictated what the acceptable amount of contamination our bodies should be subjected to in the places we live and breathe.
When I began production of a documentary about Cleveland’s Train Avenue in January 2014, it came after hearing about startling discoveries of deceased dogs found in garbage bags.
They’d appear once or twice per month for years, and visible to anyone passing by as if they were just casually tossed on the side of the road, like the other trash you’d expect to find on Train Ave on any given day.
I desperately wanted to find out what happened to these dogs. Whose dogs were they? Were they ever loved?
Little did I know that curiosity would turn into a decade of fascination about Train Avenue. It would lead me to better understand the historical plight of Cleveland, as well as introduce me to the global trash crisis.
As for Train – it’s quite apparent horrible things take place there. Like the Cuyahoga, this is not an illness Train Avenue suffers alone.
Tucked away in alleys and other hotspots in major cities across the nation, illegal dumping is occurring at significantly high rates. And, most of the violators are never caught and brought to justice.
These crimes of pollution almost always occur in the poorest of neighborhoods, without much, if any, intervention to prevent them to begin with.
What makes environmental campaigns unique from other social movements is the consequences of inaction are felt regardless of your race, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, political allegiance or your economic standing.
It provides the kind of opportunity to open additional doors of dialogue about other social issues where one’s own self-interests would oftentimes dictate who participates.
Some of my most vivid childhood memories are driving downtown with my family, seeing abandoned factories with broken-out windows and walls tagged with graffiti, set upon a backdrop of a city skyline on decades of life support.
These recollections seem to be viewed through a permanent Instagram filter replicating the grainy, oversaturated photographs of that period.
In a way, venturing down Train Avenue brings back some weird nostalgia of my youth.
Based solely on the negative press it exclusively receives, it’s easy to view Train Avenue as a hopeless cause. I’m sure the same was said about the Cuyahoga in the middle of the 20th century before it became a symbol for a kind of movement that sparked political pressure and turned it into environmental action.
Reinvestment helped restore many of the Cuyahoga’s natural habitats, incrementally reversing history back to a time when it was a crown jewel for the city and its people. Saving the Cuyahoga may have even played a role in saving the city of Cleveland itself.
Rivers and roads are clearly two different pathways used for transportation. But, it hasn’t been lost how the Cuyahoga and Train Avenue were once connected together when Walworth Run last flowed above ground level.
And, that, I believe, is the bigger lesson to this story – Everything is connected. You, me and the rest of the kingdom; We share this planet together.
My hope is this documentary film – “Train Avenue“, will implant the kind of consciousness about our growing trash issues much in the same way the Cuyahoga River influenced action against water pollution.
Environmental justice is social justice. And, that effects us all.
Produced by: River Fire Films, LLC
Directed, Shot & Edited by: Jeff Theman
Dave Reuse
Matt Martin
Matt Fish
Vince Grzegorek
Lennie Stover
Trevor Hunt
Katrina Blatt
Barry
Artist: Kai Engel
Track: “Snowfall (intro)“
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