Ohio River

==History==
===Precolumbian===
[[File:Steamboat "Morning Star", 1858.jpg|thumb|Steamboat ''Morning Star'', a Louisville and Evansville mail packet, in 1858]]
The river had great significance in the history of the [[Native Americans in the United States|Native Americans]], as numerous prehistoric and historic civilizations formed along its valley.<ref>{{cite web |url = https://www.britannica.com/place/Ohio-River |title = Ohio River {{!}} river, United States |website = Encyclopedia Britannica |access-date = February 2, 2019 |archive-date = February 3, 2019 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20190203032157/https://www.britannica.com/place/Ohio-River |url-status = live}}</ref> For thousands of years, Native Americans used the river as a major transportation and trading route.<ref name=ref01>{{cite book |last=McNeese |first=Tim |title=The Ohio River |publisher=Chelsea House Publishing|date = 2004|isbn = 9780791077252}}</ref>

In the five centuries before European colonization, the [[Mississippian culture]] built numerous regional [[chiefdom]]s and major [[Earthworks (archaeology)|earthwork mounds]] in the Ohio Valley like the [[Angel Mounds]] near [[Evansville, Indiana]] as well as in the [[Mississippi River|Mississippi Valley]] and the Southeast. The historic [[Osage Nation|Osage]], [[Omaha people|Omaha]], [[Ponca]], and [[Kaw (tribe)|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]].

===European discovery===
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;<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ngz-jTApvNoC&q=abraham+wood+ohio+river&pg=PA28|title=A History of Appalachia |last=Drake|first=Richard B.|date=August 1, 2003 |publisher=University Press of Kentucky|isbn=978-0-8131-9060-0 |language=en|access-date=October 19, 2020 |archive-date= July 14, 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230714233113/https://books.google.com/books?id=ngz-jTApvNoC&q=abraham+wood+ohio+river&pg=PA28|url-status= live}}</ref> Frenchman [[Robert de La Salle]]'s putative Ohio expedition of 1669;<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Rene_R._de_La_Salle |title= Rene R. de La Salle |website=Ohio History Central |access-date=April 27, 2019 |archive-date=April 27, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190427204508/http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Rene_R._de_La_Salle |url-status=live}}</ref> and two expeditions of Virginians sponsored by Colonel Wood: the [[Batts and Fallam expedition]] of 1671,<ref name="ricebrown" /> and the Needham and Arthur expedition of 1673-74.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/articles/1620 |title=Needham and Arthur Expedition|website=The West Virginia Encyclopedia|access-date=April 27, 2019|archive-date=April 27, 2019|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20190427204510/https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/articles/1620 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>Who gets credit for discovering the ''Ohio'' River may depend on where one places the headwaters: in colonial times, the Allegheny extended to the mouth of the Kanawha; today, the headwaters of the Ohio are placed at the mouth of the Monongehela.</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://digital.library.pitt.edu/islandora/object/pitt:31735057893269/viewer#page/22/mode/2up |title=The Planting of civilization in western Pennsylvania |publisher=University of Pittsburgh Press |year=1967 |website=University of Pittsburgh Press Digital Editions |page=47 |access-date= April 27, 2019 |archive-date=April 27, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190427203801/https://digital.library.pitt.edu/islandora/object/pitt%3A31735057893269/viewer#page/22/mode/2up |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZlWSdSV2cQQC&pg=PA16 |title=Ohio River |last=McNeese |first=Tim |year=2004 |publisher=Infobase Publishing |isbn=9781438125206 |pages=16 |access-date=April 27, 2019 |archive-date=July 14, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230714233113/https://books.google.com/books?id=ZlWSdSV2cQQC&pg=PA16 |url-status=live}}</ref>

===Exploration and settlement===
===={{anchor|Arnout Viele, 1693}}Arnout Viele (1693)====
In early autumn 1692, loyal English-speaking [[New Amsterdam|Dutchman]] Arnout Viele and a party of eleven companions from [[Esopus, New York|Esopus]]<ref name=Hanna2>{{cite book |last=Hanna |first=Charles Augustus |title=The Wilderness Trail |volume=2 |publisher=G.P. Putnam's Sons |location=New York |date=1911 |url={{google books|1k4zAQAAMAAJ|plainurl=yes}}}}</ref>—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.<ref name=buck>{{cite book |last1=Buck |first1=Solon J. |last2=Buck |first2=Elizabeth |title=The Planting of Civilization in Western Pennsylvania |url={{google books|eHz4jgmAhMIC|plainurl=yes|page=47}} |publisher=University of Pittsburgh Press |date=1995 |orig-year=1939 |page=47 |edition=third |isbn=978-0-8229-7405-5}}</ref><ref name=allen>{{cite book |editor-last=Allen |editor-first=John Logan |title=North American Exploration |volume=2: A Continent Defined |publisher=University of Nebraska Press |location=Lincoln, Nebraska |date=1997 |page=311 |url={{google books|8N4ckSmAiL0C|plainurl=yes|page=311}} |isbn=978-0-8032-1023-3}}</ref> 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.<ref name=allen/>

He and his company left [[Albany, New York|Albany]], traveling southbound and crossing portions of present-day New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania. They apparently followed the [[Susquehanna River#West Branch Susquehanna|west branch of the Susquehanna River]] into the mountains, traversing the [[Tioga River (Chemung River tributary)|Tioga River]] and reaching a tributary of the [[Allegheny River]] before floating down to the Shawnee towns along the Ohio River.<ref name=allen/> Viele and his expedition spent most of 1693 exploring the Ohio River and its tributaries in northern Kentucky with their Shawnee hosts.<ref name=allen/> 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";<ref name=allen/> their party had been gone for fifteen months, but Viele was away for about two years.<ref name=ricebrown>{{cite book |last1=Rice |first1=Otis K. |last2=Brown |first2=Stephen W. |title=West Virginia: A History |publisher=University Press of Kentucky |location=Lexington |edition=Second |date=1993 |orig-year=1985 |url={{google books|zlVw7sa3jocC|plainurl=yes|page=13}} |page=13 |isbn=978-0-8131-3766-7}}</ref> 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]].<ref name=buck/><ref name=allen/>

===={{anchor|Gaspard-Joseph Chaussegros de Léry, 1729}}Gaspard-Joseph Chaussegros de Léry (1729)====
{{Further|Land surveying in Kentucky}}
In 1729, [[Gaspard-Joseph Chaussegros de Léry (1682-1756)|Gaspard-Joseph Chaussegros de Léry]], a French architect and surveyor whose survey was the first [[Cartography|mapping]] of the Ohio River,<ref name=jillson>{{cite web |last=Jillson |first=Willard Rouse |title=Big Bone Lick: An Outline of Its History, Geology and Paleontology |date=1936 |page=3 |publisher=Standard Printing Company |url=http://bigbonelickkentucky.blogspot.com/2015/01/captain-charles-lemoyne-de-longueil-and.html |access-date=May 7, 2023 |archive-date=July 21, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150721082537/http://bigbonelickkentucky.blogspot.com/2015/01/captain-charles-lemoyne-de-longueil-and.html |url-status=live}}</ref> led an expedition of French troops from Fort Niagara down the [[Allegheny River|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, Kentucky|Louisville]]).<ref name=Hanna2/><ref>{{cite web |last=Bogan |first=Dallas |title=Story of the Longhunters in the Beginning |website=History of Campbell County, Tennessee |url=http://www.tngenweb.org/campbell/hist-bogan/Longhunters-beginning.html |access-date=October 27, 2015 |archive-date=November 25, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151125060031/http://www.tngenweb.org/campbell/hist-bogan/Longhunters-beginning.html |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Henderson |first=Archibald |chapter=The Long Hunters in the Twilight Zone |title=The Conquest of the Old Southwest: The Romantic Story of the Early Pioneers |chapter-url={{google books|hUcWAAAAYAAJ|plainurl=yes|page=116}} |date=1920 |location=New York |publisher=The Century Co |page=116}}</ref> Chaussegros de Lery mapped the Great Lakes in 1725, and engineered the Niagara fortifications in 1726.<ref name=osmon>{{cite book |last=Osmon |first=Rick |title=The Graves of the Golden Bear: Ancient Fortresses and Monuments of the Ohio |publisher=Grave Distraction |location=Nashville, Tennessee |date=2011 |url={{google books|E8t8AwAAQBAJ|plainurl=yes|page=31}} |page=31 |isbn=978-0-9829-1286-7}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |editor-last=Rickerson |editor-first=Don |title=The Expedition of Baron de Longueuil |url={{google books|jSUCAQAAQBAJ|plainurl=yes|page=7}} |page=7 |date=2013 |orig-year=1939 |edition=digital |publisher=Pennsylvania Historical Society, Federal Works Agency, Work Projects Administration}}</ref>

{{blockquote|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]]{{sfn|Hanna|1911|page=126}} }}

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''.<ref name=bellin>{{cite book |title=Remarques sur le Carte de l'Amerique Septentrionale |trans-title=Notes on the Map of North America |language=fr |first=Jacques Nicolas |last=Bellin |pages=120–121 |publisher=Didot |location=Paris, France |url={{google books|gtSsoRHgj3sC|plainurl=yes|page=120}} |date=1755}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Rothert |first=Otto Arthur |title=The Outlaws of Cave-in-Rock: Historical Accounts of the Famous Highwaymen |url={{google books|qbe8qRR4OoEC|plainurl=yes|page=18}} |page=18 |publisher=Southern Illinois University Press |date=1996 |isbn=978-0-8093-2034-9}}</ref> The 1744 Bellin map, "Map of Louisiana"  ({{lang-fr|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" ({{lang-fr|endroit ou on à trouvé des os d'Elephant en 1729}}).<ref>{{cite web |title=A Note on a Mistaken Date for the Discovery of Big Bone Lick |website=Big Bone History |last=Duvall |first=James |url=http://www.oocities.org/bigbonehistory/1729-note.html |access-date=October 27, 2015 |archive-date=January 17, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160117054947/http://www.oocities.org/bigbonehistory/1729-note.html |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite map |title=Carte de la Louisiane cours du Mississipi (sic) et pais voisins |trans-title=Map of Louisiana through the Mississippi and Neighboring Country |language=fr |publisher=Library of Congress |url=https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3700.ct000661/ |date=1744 |location=Paris, France |access-date=May 7, 2023 |archive-date=May 7, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230507224739/https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3700.ct000661/ |url-status=live }}</ref> De Lery's men found teeth weighing {{convert|10|lb|kg|spell=in}} with a diameter of {{convert|5|to|7|in|mm|spell=in}}, tusks {{convert|11|ft|m}} long and {{convert|6–7|in|mm}} in diameter, and thigh bones {{convert|5|ft|m}} long.<ref>{{cite book |last=O'Malley |first=Mimi |chapter=Discovery of a Mastodon Graveyard |title=It Happened in Kentucky: Remarkable Events that Shaped History |date=2011 |orig-year=2006 |edition=2nd |publisher=Morris Book Publishing |chapter-url={{google books|VQfvTMObViIC|plainurl=yes|page=2}} |page=2 |isbn=978-0-7627-6105-0}}</ref> The bones were collected and shipped to Paris, where they were identified as mastodon remains; they are on display at the [[National Museum of Natural History, France|French National Natural History Museum]].<ref name=jillson/><ref name=osmon/>

===={{anchor|Charles Le Moyne III, Baron de Longueil, 1739}}Charles III Le Moyne, Baron de Longueil (1739)====
[[Charles III Le Moyne]], second [[Baron de Longueuil]] (later the governor of [[Montreal]] and interim governor of [[New France]]), commanded [[Fort Niagara]] from 1726 to 1733.<ref name=jillson/> He led an expedition of 442 men, including Native Americans, from Montreal to war against the [[Chickasaw]] who occupied territory on the lower part of the Mississippi River in the area claimed as [[La Louisiane]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Banta |first=R.E. |title=The Ohio |publisher=University Press of Kentucky |date=1998 |orig-year=1949 |location=Lexington, Kentucky |url={{google books|YNB9OxE_0v8C|plainurl=yes|page=60}} |page=60 |isbn=978-0-8131-2098-0}}</ref> According to [[Gaston Pierre de Lévis]], Duke de Mirepoix, the expedition used the Ohio River as a corridor to the Mississippi.

{{blockquote|Among the officers who accompanied this party were Major de Lignery; Lieutenants, de Vassan, Aubert de Gaspe, Du Vivier, de Verrier, Le Gardeur de St. Pierre, Chevalier de Villiers, de Portneuf, de Sabrevious; Father Vernet, chaplain; Cadets, [[Daniel-Marie Chabert de Joncaire de Clausonne|Joncaire de Closonne]], Le Gai de Joncaire, Drouet de Richarville the younger, Chaussegros de Lery the younger, de Gannes, Chev. Benoist, de Morville, de Selles, and seventeen others. The rank and file consisted of three sergeants, six corporals, six lance corporals, twenty-four soldiers, forty-five ''[[habitants]]'', one hundred and eighty-six [[Iroquois]] from the Sault, forty-one from the [[Lake of Two Mountains]], thirty-two [[Algonquian peoples|Algonquin]] and [[Nipissing First Nation|Nipissing]], fifty [[Abenaki|Abenaqui]] from St. Francois and Bécancour, Quebec; Father La Bretonnier, Jesuit; Queret, missionary.{{sfn|Hanna|1911|page=239}} }}

One of the first reported eyewitness accounts of [[Lower Shawneetown|Shannoah]], a Shawnee town, was by le Moyne III in July 1739. On their journey down the Ohio River toward the Mississippi, they met with local chiefs in a village on the [[Scioto River]].

===={{anchor|John Howard and John Peter Salling, 1742}}John Howard and John Peter Salling (1742)====
John Howard, a pioneer from Virginia, led a party of five—[[John Peter Salling]] (a Pennsylvania German),<ref name=draper>{{cite book |last=Draper |first=Lyman C. |title=Life of Daniel Boone |url={{google books|6npr_LGJH-cC|plainurl=yes|page=47}} |publisher=Stackpole Books |location=Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania |date=1998 |isbn=978-0-8117-0979-8}}</ref> Josiah Howard (John's son), Charles Sinclair, and John Poteet (Vizt)—from the Virginia mountains to the Mississippi River.<ref>{{cite book |last=Durret |first=Reuben Thomas |title=John Filson, The First Historian of Kentucky |url={{google books|xrYUAAAAYAAJ|plainurl=yes|page=31}} |publisher=John P. Morton & Co |page=31 |date=1884 |location=Louisville, Kentucky}}</ref> The elder Howard had a promised reward of {{convert|10,000|acre|ha}} of land for a successful expedition from the Virginia Royal Governor's Council to reinforce British claims in the west. Howard offered equal shares of the 10,000 acres to the four other members of his expedition. The party of five left John Peter Salling's house in August County on March 16, 1742, and traveled west to [[Cedar Creek (North Fork Shenandoah River tributary)|Cedar Creek]] (near the Natural Bridge), crossing [[Greenbrier River]] and landing at the [[New River (Kanawha River tributary)|New River]]. At New River, the Virginia explorers built a large [[bull boat]] frame and covered it with five buffalo skins. The first Englishmen to explore the region then followed the New River for {{convert|250|mi|km}}, until it became too dangerous to navigate. At a large waterfall, they traveled overland to the [[Coal River (West Virginia)|Coal River]]. Following the [[Kanawha River]], they entered the Ohio River {{convert|444|mi|km}} above the falls. The Virginia pioneers traced the northern boundary of Kentucky for {{convert|500|mi|km|spell=in}}, reaching the [[Mississippi River]] on June 7.<ref name="harrison">{{cite book|last1=Harrison|first1=Lowell H.|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=63GqvIN3l3wC|title=A New History of Kentucky|last2=Klotter|first2=James C.|date=1997|publisher=University Press of Kentucky|location=Lexington|pages=7–8|isbn=9780813120089 |author-link1=Lowell H. Harrison|author-link2=James C. Klotter|access-date=May 30, 2015|archive-date=July 14, 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230714233118/https://books.google.com/books?id=63GqvIN3l3wC|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name=forbes>{{cite encyclopedia |last=Forbes |first=Harold Malcolm |title=John Peter Salling |encyclopedia=The West Virginia Encyclopedia |edition=online |date=October 29, 2010 |url=http://www.wvencyclopedia.org/articles/167 |publisher=West Virginia Humanities Council |access-date=May 7, 2023 |archive-date=May 28, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230528032520/https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/articles/167 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Batman |first=Richard |title=The Odyssey of John Peter Salley |journal=Virginia Cavalcade |date=Summer 1981 |volume=31 |issue=1 |url=https://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/guides/cavalcade/volumes/v31_40/sum81.htm |url-access=subscription |access-date=May 7, 2023 |archive-date=May 7, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230507224205/https://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/guides/cavalcade/volumes/v31_40/sum81.htm |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Harrison |first=Fairfax |title=The Virginians on the Ohio and the Mississippi in 1742 |journal=Virginia Magazine of History and Biography |date=April 1922 |volume=30 |issue=2 |pages=203–222 |publisher=Virginia Historical Society |jstor=4243878}}</ref><ref name=rice>{{cite book |last=Rice |first=Otis K. |title=Frontier Kentucky |url={{google books|EsoeBgAAQBAJ|plainurl=yes|page=7}} |page=7 |date=1993 |publisher=University Press of Kentucky |location=Lexington |isbn=978-0-8131-1840-6}}</ref> They descended just below the mouth of the [[Arkansas River]], where they were ambushed by a large company of Native Americans, Blacks and Frenchmen on July 2, 1742; one or two of Howard's men were killed.<ref>{{cite book |editor-last=Simon |editor-first=Kevin F. |title=The WPA Guide to Kentucky |url={{google books|e6YfBgAAQBAJ|plainurl=yes|page=36}} |page=36 |date=1996 |orig-year=1939 |edition=reprint |publisher=University Press of Kentucky |location=Lexington |isbn=978-0-8131-5869-3}}</ref> The rest were brought to [[New Orleans]] and imprisoned as spies.<ref name=draper/> After two years in prison, Salling escaped on October 25, 1744, and returned on a southern route to his home in [[Augusta County, Virginia]], in May 1745. John Howard was extradited to France to stand trial. His ship was intercepted by the English and, as a free man, he reported his adventures after landing in London; however, his account has been lost.<ref name=harrison/><ref name=rice/> Salling's detailed account of Virginia's adjacent lands was used in Joshua Fry and Peter Jefferson's 1751 map.<ref name=harrison/><ref name=rice/>

In 1749, the [[Ohio Company]] was established in [[Virginia Colony]] to settle and trade in the Ohio River region. Exploration of the territory and trade with the Indians in the region near the [[Forks of the Ohio|Forks]] brought white colonists from both [[Province of Pennsylvania|Pennsylvania]] and Virginia across the mountains, and both colonies claimed the territory. The movement across the Allegheny Mountains of Anglo-American settlers and the claims of the area near modern-day Pittsburgh led to conflict with the French, who had forts in the [[Ohio Country|Ohio River Valley]]. This conflict was called the [[French and Indian War]], and would merge into the global Anglo-French struggle, the [[Seven Years' War]]. In 1763, following its defeat in the war, France ceded its area east of the Mississippi River to [[Kingdom of Great Britain|Britain]] and its area west of the Mississippi River to [[Spain]] in the [[Treaty of Paris (1763)|1763 Treaty of Paris]].

The 1768 [[Treaty of Fort Stanwix]] with several tribes opened Kentucky to colonial settlement and established the Ohio River as a southern boundary for American Indian territory.<ref>{{cite book |last=Taylor |first=Alan |title=The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution |year=2006 |publisher=Alfred A. Knopf |location=New York, NY |isbn=978-0-679-45471-7 |page=[https://archive.org/details/dividedgroundind0000tayl/page/44 44, see map on 39] |url=https://archive.org/details/dividedgroundind0000tayl/page/44 }}</ref> In 1774 the [[Quebec Act]] restored the land east of the Mississippi River and north of the Ohio River to [[Province of Quebec (1763–1791)|Quebec]], in effect making the Ohio the southern boundary of [[Canada]]. This appeased [[French Canadians]] in Quebec but angered the colonists of the [[Thirteen Colonies]]. [[Lord Dunmore's War]] south of the Ohio river also contributed to cession of land north to Quebec to prevent colonial expansion onto Native American territory. During the [[American Revolutionary War|Revolutionary War]]. in 1776 the British military engineer [[John Montrésor]] created a map of the river showing the strategic location of [[Fort Pitt (Pennsylvania)|Fort Pitt]], including specific navigational information about the Ohio River's rapids and tributaries in that area.<ref>{{cite web |last=Montrésor |first=John |url=http://www.wdl.org/en/item/9581/ |year=1776 |title=Map of the Ohio River from Fort Pitt |work=[[World Digital Library]] |location=Pennsylvania |access-date=July 1, 2013 |archive-date=July 15, 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130715005545/http://www.wdl.org/en/item/9581/ |url-status=live }}</ref> However, the [[Treaty of Paris (1783)|1783 Treaty of Paris]] gave the entire Ohio Valley to the [[United States]], and numerous white settlers entered the region.

[[File:Wheeling Suspension Bridge Lithograph.jpg|thumb|Built between 1847 and 1849, the [[Wheeling Suspension Bridge]] was the first bridge across the river and a crucial part of the National Road.]]
The economic connection of the [[Ohio Country]] to the [[East Coast of the United States|East]] was significantly increased in 1818 when the [[National Road]] being built westward from [[Cumberland, Maryland]], reached [[Wheeling, West Virginia|Wheeling, Virginia]], (now [[West Virginia]]), providing an easier overland connection from the [[Potomac River]] to the Ohio River.<ref name="WDL2">{{cite web |last=Fowler |first=Thaddeus Mortimer |url=http://www.wdl.org/en/item/11374/ |title=Bird's Eye View of Cumberland, Maryland 1906 |website=[[World Digital Library]] |year=1906 |access-date=July 22, 2013 |archive-date=October 3, 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131003004014/http://www.wdl.org/en/item/11374/ |url-status=live}}</ref> The [[Wheeling Suspension Bridge]] was built over the river at Wheeling from 1847 to 1849, making the trip west easier. For a brief time, until 1851, it was the world's largest suspension bridge. The bridge survived the [[American Civil War]], after having been improved in 1859. It was renovated again in 1872, and remains in use as the oldest vehicular suspension bridge in the U.S.

[[Louisville, Kentucky|Louisville]] was founded in 1778 as a military encampment on [[Corn Island (Kentucky)|Corn Island]] (now submerged) by General George Rogers Clark 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 {{convert|26|ft|sp=us}} in a stretch of about {{convert|2|mi|sp=us}}. In this area, the river flowed over hard, fossil-rich beds of [[limestone]]. The outpost was moved that same year to the south shore where [[Fort-on-Shore]] was constructed. It proved insufficient within 3 years, and the mighty [[Fort Nelson (Kentucky)|Fort Nelson]] was constructed upriver. The town of Louisville was chartered in 1780, in honor of King Louis XVI of France. The first [[Lock (water transport)|locks]] on the river {{ndash}} the [[Louisville and Portland Canal]] {{ndash}} were built between 1825 and 1830 to circumnavigate the falls. Fears that Louisville's transshipment industry would collapse proved ill-founded: but the increasing size of steamships and barges on the river meant that the outdated locks could serve only the smallest vessels until well after the [[American Civil War|Civil War]] when improvements were made. The [[U.S. Army Corps of Engineers]] improvements were expanded again in the 1960s, forming the present-day [[McAlpine Locks and Dam]].

===Nineteenth century===
During the nineteenth century, emigrants from Virginia, North Carolina and Kentucky traveled by the river and settled along its northern bank. Known as [[butternut (people)|butternuts]], they formed the dominant culture in the southern portions of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois with a society that was primarily [[Southern United States|Southern]] in culture. Largely devoted to agricultural pursuits, they shipped much of their produce along the river to ports such as Cincinnati.<ref>Howe, Daniel Walker. ''What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848''. Oxford University Press, 2007. p.136-138</ref>

[[File:Karl Bodmer Travels in America (7).jpg|thumb|left|''Cave-in-rock, view on the Ohio'' (circa 1832, [[Cave-in-Rock State Park|Cave-In-Rock, Illinois]]): aquatint by [[Karl Bodmer]] from the book ''Maximilian, Prince of Wied's Travels in the Interior of North America, during the years 1832–1834'']]
Because the Ohio River flowed westward, 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|St. Louis, Missouri]]. There, some continued on up the [[Missouri River]], some up the Mississippi, and some farther west over land routes. In the early 19th century, [[river pirate]]s such as [[Samuel Mason]], operating out of [[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 [[keelboat]]s used for commerce in the early days of American settlement. The Ohio River boatmen inspired 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 is one of the factors that led to the United States' [[Louisiana Purchase]] in 1803.

===Free states border===
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]]. One antebellum [[Slave trade in the United States|slave trader]] reported that they kept slaves chained two-by-two while navigating the Ohio, only when they reached the Mississippi could the slaves be unchained for a time, because "there was slavery on both sides of the boat."<ref>{{cite book |last=Johnson |first=Walter |title=Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market |publisher=Harvard University Press |year=2009 |isbn=9780674039155 |location=Cambridge |pages=61 |language=en-us |oclc=923120203 |author-link=Walter Johnson (historian)}}</ref> The expression "sold down the river" originated as a lament of Upper South slaves, especially from Kentucky, who were shipped via the Ohio and Mississippi to cotton and sugar plantations in the [[Deep South]]. Changes in crops cultivated in the Upper South resulted in slaves available to be sold to the South, where the expansion of cotton plantations was doing very well. Invention of the [[cotton gin]] made cultivation of short-staple cotton profitable throughout the Black Belt of this region.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.ket.org/underground/behind/mendes.htm |work=KET's Underground Railroad: Passage to Freedom, with Kentucky Humanities Association |title=Geography |access-date=December 19, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141020164911/http://www.ket.org/underground/behind/mendes.htm |archive-date=October 20, 2014 |url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Dunaway |first=Wilma A. |chapter=Put in Master's Pocket: Interstate Slave Trading and the Black Appalachian Diaspora |title=Appalachians and Race: The Mountain South from Slavery to Segregation |editor-last=Inscoe |editor-first=John C. |publisher=University Press of Kentucky |year=2000 |pages=5–6 |isbn=978-0813121734 |access-date=December 19, 2018 |quote=Bluegrass dealers made a business of buying up Negroes at auction sales and shipping them down to New Orleans to be sold to owners of cotton and sugar cane plantations. . . . This practice gave rise to the expression 'sold down the river. |chapter-url=https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxkdW5hd2F5d2lsbWF8Z3g6MjgyY2NkZDgxYzJlYWNmMw |chapter-format=DOC |archive-date=May 8, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210508104116/https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxkdW5hd2F5d2lsbWF8Z3g6MjgyY2NkZDgxYzJlYWNmMw |url-status=live}}</ref>

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]].<ref>{{cite web |last=Hudson |first=J. Blaine |title=Crossing the "Dark Line": Fugitive Slaves and the Underground Railroad in Louisville and North Central Kentucky (excerpt) |url=http://www.ket.org/underground/research/crossing.htm |work=KET's Underground Railroad: Passage to Freedom, with Kentucky Humanities Association |access-date=February 25, 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130212015127/http://www.ket.org/underground/research/crossing.htm |archive-date=February 12, 2013 |url-status=dead}}</ref> More escaping slaves, estimated in the thousands, made their perilous journey north to freedom across the Ohio River than anywhere else across the north-south frontier. [[Harriet Beecher Stowe]]'s ''[[Uncle Tom's Cabin]]'', the bestselling novel that fueled abolitionist work, was the best known of the anti-slavery novels that portrayed such escapes across the Ohio. The times have been expressed by 20th-century novelists as well, such as the [[Nobel Prize in Literature|Nobel Prize]]-winning [[Toni Morrison]], whose novel ''[[Beloved (novel)|Beloved]]'' was adapted as a film of the same name. She also composed the libretto for the opera ''[[Margaret Garner (opera)|Margaret Garner]]'' (2005), based on the life and trial of an enslaved woman who escaped with her family across the river.

===State border dispute===
The colonial charter for Virginia defined its territory as extending to the north shore of the Ohio, so that the riverbed was "owned" by Virginia. Where the river serves as a boundary between states today, Congress designated the entire river to belong to the states on the east and south, i.e., West Virginia and Kentucky at the time of admission to the Union, that were divided from Virginia. Thus [[Wheeling Island]], the largest inhabited island in the Ohio River, belongs to West Virginia, although it is closer to the Ohio shore than to the West Virginia shore. Kentucky sued the state of Indiana in the early 1980s because of their construction of the never-completed [[Marble Hill Nuclear Power Plant]] in Indiana, which would have discharged its waste water into the river. This would have adversely affected Kentucky's water supplies.

The [[Supreme Court of the United States|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's right to collect taxes on [[Harrah's Metropolis|a riverboat casino]] docked in [[Metropolis, Illinois|Metropolis]], citing its own control of the entire river. [[Tropicana Evansville|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 forward, then reversing and going backward on the Indiana shore only. Both Illinois and Indiana have long since changed their laws to allow riverboat casinos to be permanently docked, with Illinois changing in 1999 and Indiana in 2002.

===Bridge collapse===
[[File:Silver Bridge, 1928.jpg|thumb|right|[[Silver Bridge]] in [[Point Pleasant, West Virginia]], which collapsed into the Ohio River on December 15, 1967, killing 46 people]]
The Silver Bridge at [[Point Pleasant, West Virginia]], collapsed into the river on December 15, 1967. The collapse killed 46 people who had been crossing when the bridge failed. The bridge had been built in 1929, and by 1967 was carrying too heavy a load for its design.<ref>{{cite journal |last=LeRose |first=Chris |date=October 2001 |title=The Collapse of the Silver Bridge |url=http://www.wvculture.org/history/wvhs/wvhs1504.html |journal=West Virginia Historical Society Quarterly |volume=15 |issue=4 |access-date=December 20, 2018 |archive-date=March 6, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160306020500/http://www.wvculture.org/history/wvhs/wvhs1504.html |url-status=live }}</ref> The bridge was rebuilt about one mile downstream and in service as the [[Silver Memorial Bridge]] in 1969.

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