Ohio River Valley

“ During the French and Indian War, the place was prominent as a rendezvous for the enemies of American borderers; numerous bloody forays were planned here, and hither were brought to be adopted into the tribes, or to be cruelly tortured, according to savage whim, many of the captives whose tales have made lurid the history of the Ohio Valley.
Passing Beaver River, the Ohio enters upon its grand sweep to the southwest. The wide uplands at once become more rustic, especially those of the left bank, which no longer is threaded by a railway, as heretofore all the way from Brownsville. ”

“ Many fine towns and cities border the Ohio, the larger places standing chiefly at the mouths of the affluents. Below Louisville the valley broadens and the skirting hills retire to a great distance from the river banks. As the larger part of the drainage comes from the mountain districts, the Ohio is unable in times of very heavy rainfall or rapid thaw of the winter's snow to carry off the vast quantity of water suddenly emptied into it. ”

“ The other day, when the river was rising, a Cincinnati follower of the apostle's calling averred that there was no use fishing when the water was coming up. As the variable Ohio is like the ocean tide, ever rising or falling, it would seem that the thousands in this valley who make fishing their livelihood must be playing a losing game.
There are many beautiful islands on these lower reaches of the river. We followed the narrow channel between Little Hurricane and the Kentucky shore, a charming run of two or three miles, with both banks a dense tangle of drift-wood, weeds and vines. ”

“ Near Ohio River are vast mines, and a daily sight along the Baltimore and Ohio Railway and contributing roads, especially the Hocking Valley, is the long trains of immense cars loaded with coal and coke and drawn by monster engines which make the earth tremble as they thunder along. Most of the sandstone, including the brownstone much used in the east for house-fronts, is quarried in a tract whose western end is in Ohio. ”

“ It is fortunate for the stability of these towns, that the Ohio flows along the transcontinental pathway westward, so that the great railway lines may serve them without deflection from their natural course. Had the great stream flowed south instead of west, the industries of the valley doubtless would gradually have been removed to the transverse highways of the new commerce, save where these latter crossed the river, and thus have left scores of once thriving communities mere 'longshore wrecks of their former selves. ”

“ CHAPTER II. SOURCES OF THE OHIO RIVER DESCRIPTION OF THE MONONGAHELA AND ALLEGHANY RIVERS.— THE OHIO RIVER.— EXPLORATION OF CAVELIER DE LA SALLE.— NAMES GIVEN BY ANCIENT CARTOGRAPHERS TO THE OHIO.— ROUTES OF THE ABORIGINES FROM THE GREAT LAKES TO THE OHIO RIVER. THE southerly branch of the Ohio River, and one of its chief affluents, is made by the union of the West Fork and Tygart Valley rivers, in the county of Marion, state of Virginia, the united waters of which flow north into Pennsylvania as the Monongahela River, and is there joined by the Cheat River, its principal tributary. ”

“ In the Ohio and White Water river valleys a sandstone and limestone formation predominates. The north and north central portions of the state, formerly rather swampy, have become since the clearing of the forests as productive as the south central. The most fertile part of the state is the Wabash valley; the least fertile the sandy region, of small extent, immediately south of Lake Michigan. ”

“ But these acts of Congress were far more easily passed than enforced. In the first place, even before the land north of the Ohio was purchased by the United States, white settlers began crossing the Ohio and settling on the “Indian Side.” By the year 1780 the Indian Side of the river had been quite wrested from the savages, at least from Pittsburg down to the Scioto. Mclntosh had built Fort Laurens on the Tuscarawas and, with the help of others, the Delawares had been driven from the Muskingum Valley. Clark had captured Illinois and it was now a part of Virginia. ”

“ Wednesday, July 25.—Started on our journey and came through West Liberty, situated on Mad river, thence into the township of Salem, Champaign county, and encamped about two miles north of Terbana, on the farm of Joseph Vance, Governor of the state of Ohio. The encampment was formed near his residence, at six o'clock, having traveled twelve miles this day. The country in the valley of Mad river is level and beautiful and very fertile. We saw extensive fields of wheat on each side of the way, mostly reaped, and crops of all kinds were far better than any we had seen elsewhere on our journey. ”

“ Corresponding evidence preserves the traces of an equally numerous population in the Miami Valley; and the mounds and earthworks of various kinds throughout the state of Ohio are estimated at between eleven and twelve thousand. They are stated to be scarcely less numerous on the Kenhawas in Virginia than on the Scioto and Miamis, and are abundant on the White River and Wabash, as also upon the Kentucky, Cumberland, Tennessee, and numerous other tributaries of the Ohio and Mississippi. ”

“ As the population of the country rapidly increased, and the means of communication by water were improved, the resources of the country were developed, manufactures sprang up, and the commerce of the Ohio Valley experienced a remarkable growth. ”

“ Other northern affluents, as the Muskingum, the Scioto, and the Miami, descend, like the Allegheny, from the plain studded with lakes not far from Lake Erie. The southern affluents are larger, and rise, like the Monongahela, among the upland glades of the Appalachians or on the Appalachian plateau. The Kanawha (navigable to Charleston, W. Va.) and the Licking traverse salt-yielding regions. The Kentucky River (navigable to Beattyville, Ky.) joins the Ohio above the Louisville Rapids and marks the natural division between the middle and lower courses of the river. ”

“ The evolution of craft on the Ohio River portrays in a remarkable manner the economic development of the Central West. Being the one practicable artery in the empire between the Appalachian uplift and the Mississippi, and the Blue Ridge and the Great Lakes, this river was, from the beginning of the eighteenth century onward, the main route of immigration and commerce, and the story of those years is contained in the story of these craft which carried the freight and fortune of the millions who came and built homes and labored here. ”

“ South of the forty-first parallel, the rivers have no reservoirs to hold any part of the flow from their water-shed. Within this vast area few lakes or ponds exist. The superabundance of water has no restraint, but at once takes to the bottom lands. To this southern system the Ohio River notably belongs, with all its tributaries. Within its two hundred thousand square miles of area, scarcely a natural reservoir is to be found. No other part of the country is so devoid of basins. ”

“ The Ohio River is a greater and more important stream than is generally realized. It drains a vast and rich territory; its northern source is in latitude 42° 20 ́, while its mouth, thirteen hundred miles away, is in latitude 37° north. Its eastern tributaries are in longitude 78°, while its outlet is in longitude 89° 20 ́. It thus comprises 5° 2 ́ of latitude and 11° 20 ́ of longitude. The Ohio drains a greater area than the Mississippi above the mouth of the Missouri ”

“ There are about 78 villages and towns and 13 cities on the Ohio River between Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, a distance of 460 miles. The population on this portion of the river, and its contributing streams, is over 31⁄2 millions. The average population, per square mile of drainage area, on the Ohio River is 47 ”

“ One of these spread upward from the neighborhood of Akron to the east and west of where Cleveland stands; but by far the largest flooded nearly all that part of Ohio which the glaciers failed to cover, from beyond where Pittsburg is to where Cincinnati is. At the last point a mighty ice dam formed every winter till as the climate grew warmer and the ice thawed more and more, the waters burst the dam, and poured their tide down the Ohio River to the Mississippi, while those of the northern lake rushed through the Cuyahoga to Lake Erie, and both lakes disappeared forever. ”

“ A building has been erected for the instruction of youth, who are at present under the care of a preceptor. The bottom lands on this river are more extensive and of a better quality than those on the Muskingum.
On this river thirty miles from Athens and five miles beyond the line of the Ohio company's purchase, are falls commodiously situated for any kind of water works. The descent of the water is nine feet, and the stream never fails at any season of the year. Above the falls, the land on both sides the river, is level and rich. ”

“ It is an error to say that the Ohio is a river with lofty banks. Those continuous hills, around which this river winds and curls and bends and loops, are simply the hills of the country through which the river had to find its way. We were astonished, in getting to the top of Cincinnati, after a panting walk up a zigzag road, to discover that we had only mounted to the summit of one billow in an ocean of hills.
There is always a reason why a city is just where it is. Nothing is more controlled by law than the planting, the growth, and the decline of cities. ”

“ The old riverman will, by his smile, make you conscious that you speak in unfamiliar terms, though his manner may be politeness itself. “You have never been in battle” will be the gist of his implications.
The first generation of rivermen, excluding, of course the Indians, would cover the year from 1750 to 1780 and would include those whose principal acquaintance with the Ohio and its tributaries was made through the canoe and pirogue. The second generation would stretch from 1780 or 1790 to 1810, and for our purposes will include those who lived in the heyday of the keel- and flat-boat. ”

“ Nature cast, with a lavish hand, her waters where they would count tremendously in the opening of this continent: for the waters that fell here flowed into the West and the social movement was to be westward. The Ohio, more than any river, was to influence the flood-tides of immigration. ”

“ It is always rising or falling. As at the South the item of most interest in the newspapers is the price of cotton, and in New York the price of gold, so in the West the special duty of the news-gatherer is to keep the public advised of the depth of the rivers. The Ohio, during the rainy seasons, is forty feet deeper than it is during the dry. Between the notch which marks the lowest point to which the river has ever fallen at Cincinnati and that which records the point of its highest rise, the distance is sixty-four feet. ”

“ The history of the Ohio Basin rivermen, from those who paddled a canoe and pushed a keel-boat to those who labor today on our steamboats has never been written. The lights and shades of this life have never been pictured by any novelist and perhaps they never can be. Even the student who gleans imperfect pictures from the miscellanies preserved in local histories, must in the very nature of the case, secure but a poor focus on realities. Study as you will, you will only make yourself ridiculous when you attempt to talk to one of the old-time rivermen. ”

“ Greed of the great round dollar has been the commanding passion, and nowhere has it burned more fiercely. All the crimes, treacheries, deceptions, and frauds practiced under the sun have been repeated on the Ohio between Pittsburg and Cairo. Some, perhaps unknown elsewhere, have here been committed. But here, too, that old-time clear love of living for life’s sake only, the thing which makes sailors sing the world over, was deeply felt. In its lower extremities the river reaches practically southern climes while its northern arms reach out into New York and Pennsylvania. ”

“ Enough has been said to make it clear, I trust, that the Ohio Valley has not only a local history worthy of study, a rich heritage to its people, but also that it has been an independent and powerful force in shaping the development of a nation. ”

“ Near the mouth of the Little Beaver Creek the boundary line between the States of Pennsylvania and Ohio, meets the Ohio river, 42 miles below Pittsburgh. Near the creek are some rich bottoms or intervals, but the land back rises into high hills; on some of them is a good soil and capable of cultivation. There are some handsome farms, producing wheat, rye, barley, oats, flax, hemp and Indian corn. ”

“ The picturesque calcareous cliffs on the west banks, display a novel and attractive line of river scenery. The Ohio had, from its commencement, well sustained the propriety of its ancient appellation of the Beautiful River; but it here assumed something more than beautiful—it was majestic. Let it be borne in mind that this stream, in the course of some seven or eight hundred miles flow from Pittsburgh to Shawneetown, had been swelled on the right and left hand by the Scioto, the Muskingum, the Kentucky, the Miami, Green River, Wabash, and other rivers of scarcely inferior size. ”

“ The state of Ohio had furnished the Ohio River with a margin for four hundred and seventy-five miles. The Little Miami River joins the Ohio six miles above Cincinnati; the Big Miami enters it twenty miles below the city. These streams flow through rich farming regions, but they are not navigable. After passing the town of Aurora, which is six miles below the Big Miami, I caught sight of the mouth of a creek, whose thickets of trees, in the gloom of the fast approaching night, almost hid from view the outlines of a forlorn-looking shanty-boat. ”