The Cuyahoga River’s comeback, as a longtime angler remembers it: foam, then bass

When the river was at its worst, there was little to fish for. Around 1970 to 1972 the Cuyahoga smelled like raw sewage. By the late 1980s and early 1990s anglers were catching pike, gar and muskellunge, fish that need cleaner water. A longtime valley resident recalled that change in an oral history recorded for Cuyahoga Valley National Park in September 2017, which the Park Service uses to show how fish and wildlife slowly came back during the park’s early years. This page keeps the river and the wildlife and leaves out the speaker’s name and family.

When there was little to catch

The speaker, who lived on the valley’s rim from the mid-1950s, recalled that Independence, Ohio, had little new development then. Children played outside, caught salamanders and crayfish in a creek and followed a backyard path into the woods. Before the national park existed, hunters took rabbit, mallard and squirrel in the valley. As a small child he found little to catch in the Cuyahoga itself, and he first saw a fish there at perhaps 10 to 12 years old. His first catch in the river was a common carp, at a dam on the Route 82 bridge. A favorite spot was the Brecksville Diversion Dam near the Station Road Bridge, where he did not catch a fish until his later teens, about 1970 to 1972. Other people there were mostly local kids on bikes, and by the mid-to-late 1970s he saw them occasionally catching carp, bluegills and white bass.

Anglers at the Brecksville Diversion Dam, 1974. National Archives / U.S. EPA.

Sick fish, then a recovery

Back in the 1980s some bullheads had tumors: open sores and bumps on their mouths. Bullheads are bottom feeders, and contaminants tend to settle on stream bottoms. As water quality improved, fishing got better. Over the years he caught bluegill, crappie and rock bass, then largemouth and smallmouth bass, and by the late 1980s to early 1990s pike, gar and muskellunge. The rarest catch was a smallmouth buffalo, which resembles a carp. He also hooked a nonnative Chinook salmon in about 1986 at the mouth of Tinker’s Creek, a Lake Erie fish heading upstream to spawn.

Foam, not slicks

The speaker did not remember oil slicks or solid pollutants floating by, mostly foam on the river and along the canal. Big clouds of soap sometimes blew across Canal Road, so thick that drivers had to stop until they passed, because they could not see oncoming traffic.

Foam on the Cuyahoga below the Peninsula dam, circa 1980s. NPS collection.

Ducks and deer

A Cleveland landscaping supplier once harvested topsoil along the river at the foot of Pleasant Valley Road. Grass grew in the depressions it left, and the spot became a great place for waterfowl: hundreds of ducks at a time during migration. In the 1980s, from Fitzwater Road, the speaker watched as many as 500 Canada geese, mallards, shovelers and teal land in the wetland between Fitzwater and Pleasant Valley roads. Over time trees took over the site.

The soil removal site along the Cuyahoga at Pleasant Valley Road, circa 1980s. NPS collection.

Deer were rare then. In the early to mid ’60s the whole school crowded to a window to see one in the field; he began to see them somewhat more often in the later 1970s. He says the number has increased dramatically, and deer along the stream are no longer unusual when he fishes.

A white-tailed deer in the forest. NPS collection.

Sources

• National Park Service, Cuyahoga Valley National Park, oral history recorded September 2017, “Memories of Fish and Wildlife Changes,” https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/steven-moss-memories-of-fish-and-wildlife-changes.htm; rewritten in hubnx’s own words. The speaker’s name, family details and portrait are left out.