Waterways of Westward Expansion - The Ohio River and its Tributaries - Archer Butler Hulbert

As early as January 1817 a resolution was passed by the Legislature of Ohio inviting the coöperation of Virginia, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and Indiana for the improvement of their great waterway. Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky promptly responded, and in 1819 a preliminary examination was made by General Blackburn of Virginia, General John Adair of Kentucky, General E. W. Tupper of Ohio and Walter Lowrie, Esq. of Pennsylvania who made reports to their several legislatures under the date of November 2, 1819. But during the generation following, each of these commonwealths became absorbed in internal improvements. Ohio, for instance, between 1819 and 1844, built seven hundred and sixty-five miles of canals costing nearly ten millions and almost as many miles of turnpike at a cost of four millions. Ohio also built seventy miles of railway, and in 1836 began to improve her most valuable river, the Muskingum, for slackwater navigation. Thus there was reason enough why Ohio could not undertake the improvement of the Ohio River. Her sister states were equally engaged with internal affairs, and though some steps were taken toward surveying the Ohio along the shores of several states the matter was left, as should have been the case, to the general Government.

This meant a long delay, but at last, in 1825, the great work was undertaken; since 1836 there has been a continual struggle to compel the Government to do its duty by the Ohio River and its great commerce. In 1837 the Government commenced a system of surveys and an improvement of the low-water channels by means of riprap stone dams, arranged so as to prevent the spread of the water by guiding and maintaining it in comparatively narrow channels. The work was put under the direction of Captain Sanders of the War Department. This system was continued at intervals until 1844, when, the appropriation being exhausted, the work suddenly ceased, not to be resumed until 1866.

Something of the difficulties of the old engineers may be estimated from the records left by them concerning the various obstructions in the Ohio River. “Thirty years ago,” wrote an engineer in 1866, “there were considerable tracts of woods abounding the stream ... forming dangerous obstructions to navigation. Gradually, since that period, the number of settlers along the river valley has greatly increased, and the bottom lands ... have been cleared; so that comparatively few trees remain that are liable to fall into the stream. And the same is true of most of the principal tributaries. I refer to this to show the probability that when the present snags and logs are removed, a slight expenditure annually will keep the river clear of this character of obstructions.” The snags and logs of generations had been almost untouched by the government—“left to the uncertain and unpaid-for attention of private individuals.” The plan now (1866) to rid the valley entirely of these great impediments to navigation marks a new era in the history of the Ohio. It was found, upon examination, that in the six hundred odd miles between Pittsburg and Louisville there were seventy-five separate points where there were snags, forty-nine “logs and loggy places,” twenty-eight wrecks and seventy-two “sunken boats &c.” Between Louisville and Cairo there were some sixty additional obstructions of similar nature—a total of two hundred and eighty-five obstruction points. A schedule of these obstructions, between Pittsburg and Wheeling for instance, will be found interesting. The asterisks refer to obstructions in or near the channel at comparatively low water:

Distance from Pittsburg.	Snags, etc.	Wrecks, etc.	Remarks.
2½		Wreck.	In the right channel of Brunot’s island below the point on the left side.
3		Wreck.	Same side as last, half mile below.
3¹⁄₃		Sunken barge.	Left channel Brunot’s island, first below point.
4		2 wrecks.*	Sunken in main channel near old pork-house; one of them has lately washed ashore.
9¾		Sunken barge.	In shore on left side in way of good landing; above Hamilton’s house, on Neville island, a large coal barge has stranded just below, but may be gotten off.
13		2 wrecks.*	Above Boyle’s landing; first, on right side, across channel, is very dangerous; second, in above, left.
15		Wreck.	Near Shousetown, left side, close in shore.
16	Snag.		Opposite Sewickley, a little below Boyle’s landing.
16½		Sunken barge.	Right shore below Sewickley, in way of boats at high water.
18½		Stranded barge.*	Coal barge stranded, Logtown bar, below Economy.
19½		Sunken barge.*	In channel of two boats, Logtown creek.
21	Snag.		Below foot of Crow island, right side.
23²⁄₃	Snag.		One-third mile above Freedom, Penn., right side.
24	Snag.		Close in shore at Freedom.
24¼	Snag.		In main channel, very large, below landing.
30¹⁄₃		Sunken boat.	Close in to right; not dangerous below Raccoon creek.
30¼		Sunken boat.	In channel below last; dangerous.
33½	Snag.		Opposite Industry, below Safe Harbor landing.
33²⁄₃		Sunken boat.*	Left side below last.
41	Snag.	Sunken barge.	Left channel of Line island there is a snag.
42½		Wreck.	Wreck of steamer Winchester, burnt, left channel of Babb’s island, Va., shore; not much in the way.
49¾		Sunken boat.*	In channel foot of Baker’s island; dangerous.
63	Snag.		Foot of Brown’s island; old.
63¼	Snag.		Center of River, head of cable eddy.
67		Wreck and cofferdam.	Left channel, pier Pittsburg and Steubenville railroad bridge.
67½		Sunken barge.	Left side above Steubenville; dangerous.
68		Sunken barge.	Opposite Steubenville landing, center of river.
70¾	Snags.*		Several in the vicinity of the Virginia and Ohio cross creeks.
73¼		Sunken boats.*	Two, right side, above Wellsburg, Va.
76		Sunken boats.*	Left, below block-house run.
76½	Snag.		Right side, below last; should come out.
78¾		Wreck.	Old, opposite brick house, close on left shore.
81½	Snags.		Two, right of channel, above Warren.
81¾	Snag.*		Old, right side, near white frame house.
83		Ice breaker.	Head of Pike island, at coal shaft.
84		Sunken barge.*	Edge of bar, not dangerous, opposite brick house.
87	Logs, etc.		Left and center, bottom of river, one mile below Burlington.
88		Sunken boat.	Sunken ferry-boat, close in right side, Martinsville.
89¼		Sunken barge.*	At ship-yard, Wheeling, dangerous.[75]

Captain Sanders, in the forties, had estimated that it cost about fifteen dollars to remove each ordinary snag from the Ohio. In the Mississippi the roots of snags could be thrown into the deep pools where they would soon become buried in mud; but on the Ohio such pools were not frequent and it was usually necessary to carry the roots ashore and destroy them with gunpowder. Sanders reported that up to September 1837 there had been three thousand three hundred and three obstructions removed from the Ohio. In 1839 there had been about ten thousand removed; at which time the work ceased. Some of the snags were six feet in diameter at the butt and over one hundred feet in length. In a report in 1835, on Mississippi improvement, Lieutenant Bowman stated: “It is a well-established fact that snags do not move far from where they first fall in, the weight of the earth attached to their roots serving as an anchor. It is also well established that trees which once float seldom form snags. Admitting this, it is sufficiently evident that if the banks are once cleared, there can be no subsequent formation of snags.”

Second only to such obstructions was the “Falls of the Ohio,” the one spot in all its course of nearly a thousand miles where steamboat navigation was impossible until the construction of a canal, which followed the route of the ancient portage path two and one-half miles in length between the present sites of Louisville and Shipping-port, Kentucky. In this distance the Ohio makes a fall of about twenty-five feet caused by a ledge of rocks extending across the river. Steamboating is impracticable here save only when the river is at flood-tide.

A company was incorporated by the legislature of Kentucky to cut a canal around the falls in 1804, but nothing was done until January 12, 1825, when the Louisville and Portland Canal Company was organized, with a capital of $600,000. The stock was taken by about seventy persons, residing in Kentucky, Ohio, Missouri, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, the United States holding 2,335 shares, and 1,665 issued to private individuals. Many difficulties attended the construction of the work, which was not completed until December 5, 1830. During the year 1831 406 steamboats, 46 keel-boats, and 357 flat-boats, measuring 76,323 tons, passed through the locks.[76]

The venture was highly successful from a financial point of view thanks to outrageous tolls that were charged. A twenty-four thousand dollar boat of three hundred tons running between Cincinnati and St. Louis expended in tolls in the Louisville and Portland Canal in five years a sum equal to her entire cost. “A boat of one hundred and ninety tons, owned at Cincinnati, has been in the habit of making her trips from this city to St. Louis and back, in two weeks, and has passed the canal four times in one month. Her toll, each trip, at $60 per ton, was $114, and her toll for one month was $456, or at the rate of $5,472 per year, which is nearly half the value of such a boat.”[77]

From 1831 to 1843, 13,756 steamboats passed through the Canal, and 4,701 keeland flat-boats, with a total tonnage of two and a half million tons, netting a toll of $1,227,625.20.[78] On the stock owned by the United States a cash dividend (to 1843) of $258,378 was earned—$23,378 more than the Government’s original investment. Other stockholders fared equally well from this systematic highway robbery. Such a drain on the public purse as was the Louisville-Portland Canal in the “good old days” would not be countenanced a moment today. The canal was rebuilt and enlarged in 1872, and in 1874 it passed into the control of the United States by the authority of Congress.