Cuyahoga River

The burning river in Time magazine, 1969, from a fire in 1952 On June 22, 1969, sparks from a passing train set fire to oil-soaked debris on the Cuyahoga in Cleveland. That fire was out before anyone thought to take a picture, so Time illustrated its story with archival photos of a much bigger fire on the same river in 1952. The pictures were seventeen years old, yet they turned a polluted river into a national symbol, and the burning Cuyahoga is tied to the passage of the Clean Water Act and new environmental protection agencies. Historians and legal scholars still argue over how much the fire and its pictures drove the law, which makes this the most instructive entry for anyone studying how images shape policy.