Ohio River

Ohio River
(Iroquoian: Oyo)
River
The widest point on the Ohio River is just west of Downtown Louisville, where it is one mile wide
Country  United States
States  Pennsylvania,  Ohio,  West Virginia,  Kentucky,  Indiana,  Illinois
Tributaries
 - left Kanawha River, Big Sandy River, Kentucky River, Cumberland River, Tennessee River, Licking River
 - right Beaver River, Muskingum River, Scioto River, Great Miami River, Wabash River
Cities Pittsburgh, PA, Wheeling, WV, Huntington, WV, Cincinnati, OH, Louisville, KY, Jeffersonville, IN, New Albany, IN, Owensboro, KY, Evansville, IN, Paducah, KY, Cairo, IL, Petersburg, KY
Source Allegheny River
 - location Allegany Township, Pennsylvania
 - elevation 2,240 ft (683 m)
 - coordinates
Secondary source Monongahela River
 - location Fairmont, West Virginia
 - elevation 880 ft (268 m)
 - coordinates
Source confluence
 - location Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
 - elevation 730 ft (223 m)
 - coordinates
Mouth Mississippi River
 - location Cairo, Illinois
 - elevation 290 ft (88 m)
 - coordinates
Length 1,310 mi (2,108 km)
Basin 189,422 sq mi (490,601 km²)
Discharge for Cairo, IL
 - average 281,000 cu ft/s (7,957 m3/s)
Ohio River basin
The Allegheny River (left) and Monongahela River (right) join to form the Ohio River at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – the largest metropolitan area on the river.
Wheeling, West Virginia, a major city on the river, was the first city to have a bridge across the river.
Louisville, Kentucky is situated at both the widest and deepest level of the Ohio River.
A barge hauling coal in the Louisville and Portland Canal, the only man-made portion of the Ohio River
Cincinnati, Ohio is a well-known city along the Ohio River, historically known for its riverboats. The Tall Stacks festival celebrates the Cincinnati riverboats and the Ohio River every three or four years.
Evansville, Indiana, the third-largest city in Indiana and the fourth-largest city on the river

The Ohio River is the largest tributary, by volume, of the Mississippi River. It is approximately 1,310 miles (2,108 km) long and is located in the Eastern United States.

The river had great significance in the history of the Native Americans, as numerous civilizations formed along its valley. In the five centuries prior to European contact, the Mississippian culture built numerous regional chiefdoms and major earthwork mounds in the Ohio Valley, such as Angel Mounds near Evansville, Indiana, as well as the Mississippi Valley and the Southeast. For thousands of years, Native Americans, like the European explorers and settlers who followed them, used the river as a major transportation and trading route. Historically the Ohio Valley was territory of the Osage, Omaha, Ponca and Kaw, but they migrated west of the Mississippi River under pressure from Iroquois warriors. By the mid-17th century, they had settled in their historic grounds in Missouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma and nearby states.

René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle led an expedition to the Ohio River in 1669; his French party were the first Europeans to see the river. After European-American settlement, the river served at times as a border between present-day Kentucky and Indian Territories. It was a primary transportation route for pioneers during the westward expansion of the early U.S. The Ohio flows through or along the border of six states, and its drainage basin encompasses 14 states. Through its largest tributary, the Tennessee River, the basin includes many of the states of the southeastern U.S.

During the 19th century, the river was the southern boundary of the Northwest Territory, and it served as the border between free and slave territory. It is sometimes referred to as the "Mason-Dixon line". It is commonly acknowledged as the western natural extension of the original Mason-Dixon line that divided Pennsylvania and Delaware from Maryland and West Virginia (then a part of Virginia). It was thus the unofficial and, at times disputed, border between the Northern United States and the American South or Upper South.

The Ohio River is a climatic transition area, as its water runs along the periphery of the humid subtropical and humid continental climate areas. It is inhabited by fauna and flora of both climates. In his Notes on the State of Virginia published in 1781–82, Thomas Jefferson stated: "The Ohio is the most beautiful river on earth. Its current gentle, waters clear, and bosom smooth and unbroken by rocks and rapids, a single instance only excepted."[1]

Contents

Geography and hydrography

The Ohio River is formed by the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers at Point State Park in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. From there, it flows northwest through Allegheny and Beaver counties, before making an abrupt turn to the south-southwest at the West Virginia—Ohio—Pennsylvania triple-state line (near East Liverpool, Ohio, Chester, West Virginia, and Midland, Pennsylvania). From there, it forms the border between West Virginia and Ohio, upstream of Wheeling, West Virginia.

The river then follows a roughly southwest and then west-northwest course until Cincinnati, before bending to a west-southwest course for most of its length. It flows along the borders of West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois, until it joins the Mississippi River near the city of Cairo, Illinois.

Major tributaries of the river, indicated by the location of the mouths, include:

Drainage basin

The Ohio's drainage basin covers 189,422 square miles (490,603 km²), including the easternmost regions of the Mississippi Basin. States of four regions are drained by the Ohio.

Geology

From a geologic standpoint, the Ohio River is young. The river formed on a piecemeal basis beginning between 2.5 and 3 million years ago. The earliest Ice Ages occurred at this time and dammed portions of north-flowing rivers. The Teays River was the largest of these rivers. The modern Ohio River flows within segments of the ancient Teays. The ancient rivers were rearranged or consumed by glaciers and lakes.

Upper Ohio River

The upper Ohio River formed when one of the glacial lakes overflowed into a south-flowing tributary of the Teays River. Prior to that event, the north-flowing Steubenville River (no longer in existence) ended between New Martinsville and Paden City, West Virginia. Likewise, the south-flowing Marietta River (no longer in existence) ended between the present-day cities. The overflowing lake carved through the separating hill and connected the rivers.

The resulting floodwaters enlarged the small Marietta valley to a size more typical of a large river. The new large river subsequently drained glacial lakes and melting glaciers at the end of several Ice Ages. The valley grew with each major Ice Age.

Many small rivers were altered or abandoned after the upper Ohio River formed. Valleys of some abandoned rivers can still be seen on satellite and aerial images of the hills of Ohio and West Virginia between Marietta, Ohio, and Huntington, West Virginia. As testimony to the major changes that occurred, such valleys are found on hilltops.

Middle Ohio River

The middle Ohio River formed in a manner similar to formation of the upper Ohio River. A north-flowing river was temporarily dammed southwest of present-day Louisville, Kentucky, creating a large lake until the dam burst. A new route was carved to the Mississippi River. Eventually the upper and middle sections combined to form what is essentially the modern Ohio River.

History

Pre-Columbian inhabitants of eastern North America considered the Ohio part of a single river continuing on through the lower Mississippi. The Iroquois called it Oyo. The river is 1,310 miles (2,108 km) long and carries the largest volume of water of any tributary of the Mississippi. The Indians and early explorers and settlers of the region also often considered the Allegheny to be part of the Ohio. The forks (the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers at what is now Pittsburgh) was considered a strategic military location.

In 1669 René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, led an expedition of French traders who became the first Europeans to see the river. He traveled from Canada and entered the headwaters of the Ohio, traveling as far as the Falls of Ohio at present-day Louisville before turning back. He returned to explore the river again in other expeditions. An Italian cartographer traveling with him created the first map of the Ohio River. France claimed ownership of the river until its territory in North America was ceded to Great Britain in 1763, following the Seven Years War (aka the French and Indian War.)

The confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers is at Cairo, Illinois.
Carl D. Perkins Bridge in Portsmouth, Ohio with Ohio River and Scioto River tributary on right.
Silver Bridge in Point Pleasant, West Virginia which collapsed into the Ohio River in 1967, and gained notoriety through John Keel's 1976 book and subsequent 2002 movie The Mothman Prophecies.

On May 19, 1749, King George II of Great Britain granted the Ohio Company a charter of land around the forks. Exploration of the territory and trade with the Indians in the region near the Forks by British colonials from Pennsylvania and Virginia—both of which claimed the territory—led to conflict with French forces. France also claimed the region and had built forts along the Allegheny River. This contributed to the French and Indian War in North America. It was part of the international conflict, the Seven Years' War between England and France. After several initial defeats, the British eventually gained sovereignty over the Ohio Valley.

The 1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix opened Kentucky to colonial settlement and established the Ohio River as a southern boundary for American Indian territory.[2] In 1774, the Quebec Act restored the land east of the Mississippi River and north of the Ohio River to Quebec, appeasing the French-speaking British subjects, but angering the Thirteen Colonies. They listed it as one of the Intolerable Acts which precipitated the American Revolution.

Louisville, Kentucky was founded at the only major natural navigational barrier on the river, the Falls of the Ohio. The Falls were a series of rapids where the river dropped 26 feet (7.9 m) in a stretch of about 2 miles (3.2 km). In this area, the river flowed over hard, fossil-rich beds of limestone. The first locks on the river were built in 1825 at Louisville to circumnavigate the falls. Today it is the site of McAlpine Locks and Dam.

Because the Ohio River flowed westwardly, it became a convenient means of westward movement by pioneers traveling from western Pennsylvania. After reaching the mouth of the Ohio, settlers would travel north on the Mississippi River to St. Louis, Missouri. There, some continued on up the Missouri River, some up the Mississippi, and some further west over land routes. In the early 19th century, pirates such as Samuel Mason, settled at Cave-In-Rock, Illinois, waylaid travelers on their way down the river. They killed travelers, stealing their goods and scuttling their boats. The folktales about Mike Fink recall the keelboats used for commerce in the early days of European settlement. The Ohio River boatmen were the inspiration for performer Dan Emmett, who in 1843 wrote the song "The Boatman's Dance".

Trading boats and ships traveled south on the Mississippi to New Orleans, and sometimes beyond to the Gulf of Mexico and other ports in the Americas and Europe. This provided a much-needed export route for goods from the west, since the trek east over the Appalachian Mountains was long and arduous. The need for access to the port of New Orleans by settlers in the Ohio Valley led to the Louisiana Purchase in 1803.

Because the river is the southern border of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, it was part of the border between free states and slave states in the years before the American Civil War. The expression "sold down the river" originated as a lament of Upper South slaves, especially from Kentucky, who were separated from their families and sold in Louisville and other Kentucky locations to be shipped via the Ohio River and Mississippi down to New Orleans. There they were sold to owners of cotton and sugar field plantations in the Deep South, which were notoriously hard on laborers.[3][4] Before and during the Civil War, the Ohio River was called the "River Jordan" by slaves' crossing it to escape to freedom in the North via the Underground Railroad.[5] Such escapes were depicted in contemporary anti-slavery novels, such as Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. The times have also been portrayed by late 20th century novelists such as Toni Morrison. More escaping slaves made their perilous journey north to freedom across the Ohio River than anywhere else across the north-south frontier.

Today, the Ohio River is considered to separate Midwestern Great Lakes states from Southern states which were historically border states in the Civil War.

Mouth of the Ohio, as it feeds into the Mississippi

The charter for Virginia went to the far shore of the Ohio River, so that the entire river was included in the lands "owned" by Virginia. Where the river serves as a boundary between states today, the entire river belongs to the states on the east and south, i.e., West Virginia and Kentucky, that were divided from Virginia. Thus Wheeling Island, the largest inhabited island in the Ohio River, belongs to West Virginia, even though it is closer to the Ohio shore than to the West Virginia shore. Kentucky brought suit against Indiana in the early 1980s because of the building of the Marble Hill nuclear power plant in Indiana, which would have discharged its waste water into the river.

The U.S. Supreme Court held that Kentucky's jurisdiction (and, implicitly, that of West Virginia) extended only to the low-water mark of 1793 (important because the river has been extensively dammed for navigation, so that the present river bank is north of the old low-water mark.) Similarly, in the 1990s, Kentucky challenged Illinois' right to collect taxes on a riverboat casino docked in Metropolis, citing its own control of the entire river. A private casino riverboat that docked in Evansville, Indiana on the Ohio River opened about the same time. Although such boats cruised on the Ohio River in an oval pattern up and down, the state of Kentucky soon protested. Other states had to limit their cruises to going forwards then reversing and going backwards on the Indiana shore only.

In the early 1980s, the Falls of the Ohio National Wildlife Conservation Area was established at Clarksville, Indiana.

River depth

Lawrenceburg, Indiana, is one of many towns that use the Ohio as a shipping avenue.

The Ohio River is a naturally shallow river that was artificially deepened by series of dams. The natural depth of the river varied from about 3 feet to 40 feet. The dams raise the water level and have turned the river largely into a series of reservoirs, eliminating shallow stretches and allowing for commercial navigation. From its origin to Cincinnati, the average depth is approximately 27 feet (8 m). The maximum depth is below the McAlpine Locks and Dam at the Falls of the Ohio at Louisville, Kentucky where flood stage is reached when the water reaches 55 feet (17 m) on the lower gauge. From Louisville, the river loses depth very gradually until its confluence with the Mississippi at Cairo, Illinois, where it has an approximate depth of 20 feet (6 m). Water levels for the Ohio River from Smithland Lock and Dam upstream to Pittsburgh are predicted daily by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Ohio River Forecast Center. The water levels for the Ohio River from Smithland Lock and Dam to Cairo, Illinois are predicted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Lower Mississippi River Forecast Center. The water depth predictions are relative to each local flood plain based upon predicted rainfall in the Ohio River basin in five reports as follows:

Panorama of the Ohio at its widest point, just west of downtown Louisville, Kentucky

Cities and towns along the river

Metro Area Population
Pittsburgh 2.3 million
Cincinnati 2.2 million
Louisville 1.2 million
Evansville 350,000
Huntington 290,000
Parkersburg 160,000
Wheeling 145,000
Weirton-Steubenville 132,008
Owensboro 112,000
Jeffersonville 30,479
New Albany 37,296

Cities along the Ohio include:

  • Pennsylvania
    • Pittsburgh
    • Ambridge
    • Monaca
    • Beaver
    • Rochester
    • Shippingport
    • Aliquippa
    • Sewickley
    • McKees Rocks
    • Stowe
    • Coraopolis
  • Ohio
    • Aberdeen
    • Belpre
    • Cincinnati
    • East Liverpool
    • Gallipolis
    • Ironton
    • Manchester
    • Marietta
    • Martins Ferry
    • Pomeroy
    • Portsmouth
    • Ripley
    • Steubenville
  • West Virginia
    • Weirton
    • Wheeling
    • Moundsville
    • New Martinsville
    • Paden City
    • St. Marys
    • Parkersburg
    • Ravenswood
    • Point Pleasant
    • Huntington
    • Kenova
  • Kentucky
  • Indiana
    • Charlestown
    • Madison
    • Jeffersonville
    • Clarksville
    • New Albany
    • Tell City
    • Cannelton
    • Evansville
    • Mount Vernon
    • Lawrenceburg
    • Rising Sun
  • Illinois
    • Cairo
    • Metropolis
    • Brookport
    • Old Shawneetown
    • Cave-In-Rock
    • Elizabethtown
    • Rosiclare
    • Golconda

Recreation

The world record for the largest blue catfish 104 pounds (47.2 kilograms) taken in the line class was set on the Ohio River in 1999. The river also holds records for the following species for the state of Kentucky:[7]

The Ohio River from Cairo, Illinois to Smithland, Kentucky comprises a significant portion of the Great Loop, the circumnavigation of Eastern North America by water for recreational purposes.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Jefferson, Thomas, 1743-1826. Notes on the State of Virginia
  2. ↑ *Taylor, Alan (2006). The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. p. 44, see map on 39. ISBN 0-679-45471-3. 
  3. ↑ KET's Underground Railroad - Behind the Scenes - Guy Mendes
  4. ↑ "Put in Master's Pocket: Interstate Slave Trading and the Black Appalachian Diaspora"
  5. ↑ KET's Underground Railroad - Community Research
  6. ↑ River Watch - Ohio River Basin
  7. ↑ "Kentucky State Record Fish List". Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources. 2006-04-17. http://fw.ky.gov/recordfish.asp. Retrieved 2007-02-17. 

External links