The river that caught fire

Here we are at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland,Ohio. The Cuyahoga, an Indian word for crooked river, winds from Lake Erie south out of the city, but only the first few miles are navigable by large vessels because of many sharp curves and equally as many drawbridges. Nevertheless, Cleveland is a major port on Lake Erie between Buffalo, on the Great Lake to the east of Lake Erie and Toledo to the west.

And yes, the river did catch fire...more than once, and lends its notoriety to the title of the book Crooked RiverBurning, a novel by Mark Winegardner, that covers about 30 years of the history of Cleveland from 1948-1969. Called a "bulky yet brilliant first novel" by a reviewer in the New York Times when it was published in 2001, it's a good read for those who enjoy historical fiction.

This is the first of an occasional series of pictures of historical sites in and around this city.