The Ohio River is a 981-mile-long (1,579 km) river in the United States. It is located at the boundary of the Midwestern and Southern United States, flowing in a southwesterly direction from western Pennsylvania to its mouth on the Mississippi River at the southern tip of Illinois. It is the third largest river by discharge volume in the United States and the largest tributary by volume of the north-south flowing Mississippi River, which divides the eastern from western United States.[8] It is also the 6th oldest river on the North American continent. The river flows through or along the border of six states, and its drainage basin includes parts of 14 states. Through its largest tributary, the Tennessee River, the basin includes several states of the southeastern U.S. It is the source of drinking water for five million people.[9]
The river became a primary transportation route for pioneers during the westward expansion of the early U.S. The lower Ohio River just below Louisville was obstructed by rapids known as the Falls of the Ohio where the elevation falls 26 feet (7.9 m) in 2 miles (3.2 km) restricting larger commercial navigation, although in the 18th and early 19th century its three deepest channels could be traversed by a wide variety of craft then in use. In 1830, the Louisville and Portland Canal (now the McAlpine Locks and Dam) bypassed the rapids, allowing even larger commercial and modern navigation from the Forks of the Ohio at Pittsburgh to the Port of New Orleans at the mouth of the Mississippi on the Gulf of Mexico. Since the "canalization" of the river in 1929, the Ohio has not been a natural free-flowing river; today, it is divided into 21 discrete pools or reservoirs by 20 locks and dams for navigation and power generation.[10]
The name "Ohio" comes from the Seneca, Ohi:yo', lit. "Good River".[11] 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."[12]
After the French and Indian War, Britain's trans-Appalachian Indian Reserve was divided by the river into colonial lands to the south and Native American lands to the north. In the late 18th century, the river became the southern boundary of the Northwest Territory. The river is sometimes considered as the western extension of the Mason–Dixon line that divided Pennsylvania from Maryland, and thus part of the border between free and slave territory, and between the Northern and Southern United States or Upper South. Where the river was narrow, it was crossed by thousands of slaves escaping to the North for freedom; many were helped by free blacks and whites of the Underground Railroad resistance movement.
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. Today, the Ohio River is one of the most polluted rivers in the United States. In winter, it regularly freezes over at Pittsburgh but rarely farther south towards Cincinnati and Louisville. Further down the river in places like Paducah and Owensboro, Kentucky, closer to its confluence with the Mississippi, the Ohio is ice-free year-round.
The name "Ohio" comes from the Seneca language (an Iroquoian language), Ohi:yo' (roughly pronounced oh-hee-yoh, with the vowel in "hee" held longer), a proper name derived from ohiːyoːh ("good river"), therefore literally translating to "Good River".[11][13] "Great river" and "large creek" have also been given as translations.[14][15]
Native Americans, including the Lenape and Iroquois, considered the Ohio and Allegheny rivers as the same, as is suggested by a New York State road sign on Interstate 86 that refers to the Allegheny River also as Ohi:yo'.[16] Similarly, the Geographic Names Information System lists O-hee-yo and O-hi-o as variant names for the Allegheny.[17]
An earlier Miami-Illinois language name was also applied to the Ohio River, Mosopeleacipi ("river of the Mosopelea" tribe). Shortened in the Shawnee language to pelewa thiipi, spelewathiipi or peleewa thiipiiki, the name evolved through variant forms such as "Polesipi", "Peleson", "Pele Sipi" and "Pere Sipi", and eventually stabilized to the variant spellings "Pelisipi", "Pelisippi" and "Pellissippi". Originally applied just to the Ohio River, the "Pelisipi" name later was variously applied back and forth between the Ohio River and the Clinch River in Virginia and Tennessee.[18][19] In his original draft of the Land Ordinance of 1784, Thomas Jefferson proposed a new state called "Pelisipia", to the south of the Ohio River, which would have included parts of present-day Eastern Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia.[18]
The river had great significance in the history of the Native Americans, as numerous prehistoric and historic civilizations formed along its valley.[20] For thousands of years, Native Americans used the river as a major transportation and trading route.[21]
In the five centuries before European colonization, the Mississippian culture built numerous regional chiefdoms and major earthwork mounds in the Ohio Valley like the Angel Mounds near Evansville, Indiana as well as in the Mississippi Valley and the Southeast. The historic Osage, Omaha, Ponca, and Kaw peoples lived in the Ohio Valley. Under pressure over the fur trade from the Iroquois nations to the northeast, they migrated west of the Mississippi River in the 17th century to the territory now defined as Missouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma.
Several accounts exist of the discovery and traversal of the Ohio River by Europeans in the latter half of the 17th century: Virginian colonist Abraham Wood's trans-Appalachian expeditions between 1654 and 1664;[22] Frenchman Robert de La Salle's putative Ohio expedition of 1669;[23] and two expeditions of Virginians sponsored by Colonel Wood: the Batts and Fallam expedition of 1671,[24] and the Needham and Arthur expedition of 1673–74.[25][26][27][28]
In early autumn 1692, loyal English-speaking Dutchman Arnout Viele and a party of eleven companions from Esopus[29]—Europeans, Shawnee, and a few loyal Delaware guides—were sent by the governor of New York to trade with the Shawnee and bring them into the English sphere of influence.[30][31] Viele understood several Native American languages, which made him valuable as an interpreter. He is credited with being the first European to travel and explore western Pennsylvania and the upper Ohio Valley. Viele made contact with Native American nations as far west as the Wabash River, in present-day Indiana.[31]
He and his company left Albany, traveling southbound and crossing portions of present-day New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania. They apparently followed the west branch of the Susquehanna River into the mountains, traversing the Tioga River and reaching a tributary of the Allegheny River before floating down to the Shawnee towns along the Ohio River.[31] Viele and his expedition spent most of 1693 exploring the Ohio River and its tributaries in northern Kentucky with their Shawnee hosts.[31] Gerit Luykasse, two of Viele's Dutch traders, and two Shawnee reappeared in Albany in February 1694 "to fetch powder for Arnout [Viele] and his Company";[31] their party had been gone for fifteen months, but Viele was away for about two years.[24] He and his companions returned from the Pennsylvania wilderness in August 1694, accompanied by diplomats from "seven Nations of Indians" who sought trade with the English (or peace with the powerful Iroquois nations of New York and Pennsylvania), and hundreds of Shawnee who intended to relocate in the Minisink country on the upper Delaware River.[30][31]
In 1729, Gaspard-Joseph Chaussegros de Léry, a French architect and surveyor whose survey was the first mapping of the Ohio River,[32] led an expedition of French troops from Fort Niagara down the Allegheny and Ohio Rivers as far as the mouth of the Great Miami River near Big Bone Lick and possibly the Falls of the Ohio (present-day Louisville).[29][33][34] Chaussegros de Lery mapped the Great Lakes in 1725, and engineered the Niagara fortifications in 1726.[35][36]
I am indebted for the topographical details of the course of this River to M. de Lery, Engineer, who surveyed it with the compass at the time that he descended it with a detachment of French troops in 1729.
— Jacques-Nicolas Bellin[37]
A map of the Ohio River valley, drawn by Bellin from observations by de Lery, is in Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix's History of New France.[38][39] The 1744 Bellin map, "Map of Louisiana" (French: Carte de La Louisiane), has an inscription at a point south of the Ohio River and north of the Falls: "Place where one found the ivory of Elephant in 1729" (French: endroit ou on à trouvé des os d'Elephant en 1729).[40][41] De Lery's men found teeth weighing ten pounds (4.5 kg) with a diameter of five to seven inches (130 to 180 mm), tusks 11 feet (3.4 m) long and 6–7 inches (150–180 mm) in diameter, and thigh bones 5 feet (1.5 m) long.[42] The bones were collected and shipped to Paris, where they were identified as mastodon remains; they are on display at the French National Natural History Museum.[32][35]