Just 10 years ago, it was not recommended that anyone come into contact with water from the Cuyahoga River.
Fast-forward to this summer, and the river was named a National Water Trail, joining a list of 40 other waterways across the country in the group, a subclass of the National Trails System. A 41-mile-long stretch of the Cuyahoga River extending from Summit County to Lake Erie earned its designation from the U.S. Department of the Interior in June.
“It’s a river that truly has transformed from an area that was scarred and seemed like it might never rebound into something that was not only viable for native plants and native animals that haven’t been here for so long, but also viable to recognize as a far cry from what it was even 10 years ago,” says Ryan Ainger, a Cuyahoga Valley National Park river ranger and the current co-chair of the Cuyahoga River Water Trail.
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The Cuyahoga River has a troubled, polluted past, catching on fire at least 13 times before its major, headline-making 1969 Cuyahoga River fire. This event led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and the passage of the Clean Water Act.
“A lot of people hold on to a 56-year-old notion of what Cleveland and the river that burned are like,” says Jim Ridge, founder of the Share the River nonprofit, which hosts recreation events on the water. “We do have a lot of fun changing people’s perception of what Cleveland and its Cuyahoga River are.”
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In recent decades, the waterway has made a great, well-documented ecological rebound. Its new National Water Trail status brings opportunities for increased funding, promotion and historical preservation. It also gives the river national visibility.
“It really is a sign of all the work that generations of folks have done to make the Cuyahoga River not only cleaner but a place that you can enjoy and safely recreate on,” says Ainger. “Toward 2016, the park kind of went under this effort to focus on not just being a park with a river, but a river park. Which to us meant truly embracing having this river and all the opportunities that come with it.”
Prior to the National Water Trail win, nearly all 100 miles of the Cuyahoga River had been designated as a state water trail since 2019. Since then, people have increasingly used the river recreationally.
“To now have this story of, literally, once a river that burned to being now a national water trail, that, in my eyes…should be a badge of honor,” says Ainger. “(It’s) a sign of how much the community, how much the management agencies, how much the local nonprofits have really put into renewing this river and restoring these resources.”
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