A BRIEF HISTORY OF TEE OHIO RIVER. 7+7 



A physical history of the Ohio River would not be complete 

 without a mention of the great variation in volume it presents, 

 and some mention of the probable causes. Nothing is definitely 

 known of its fluctuations during the prehistoric period, or indeed 

 previous to 1832. It is true there are traditions of great floods in 

 the river as far back as 1774. In 1787 there was a flood which 

 some authors state reached one hundred and twelve feet. In 1792 

 there was another, reaching the height of sixty feet. The flood 

 of 1832, of which there is authentic record, attained a height of 

 sixty-four feet three inches. There were, up to 1883, twelve floods 

 which reached or exceeded fifty feet. In that year (1883) the 

 water reached a height of sixty-six feet four inches ; and this was 

 exceeded the following year by a volume of water which marked 

 upon the gauge at the Cincinnati Water-Works seventy-one feet, 

 three fourths of an inch. During the year 1890 the water twice 

 reached a depth exceeding fifty feet. 



Contrast these great floods with the extreme low water some- 

 times experienced. Five times during fifty years has the water 

 sunk so low as to leave but three feet in the channel. The lowest 

 ever known was in September, 1881, when the records show that 

 twenty-three inches of water were found where three years later 

 there were seventy-one feet. In October, 1887, it was also very 

 low, there then being but two feet eight inches in the channel. 

 At that time the river in front of Cincinnati showed its hidden 

 dangers as scarcely ever before. A boy four feet high might 

 have waded across without wetting his suspender-buttons. " Ugly- 

 looking black bowlders, long, narrow, jagged reefs of moss- and 

 slime-covered rocks and hillocks of gravel uplift their heads 

 three, four, and five feet above the surface of the stream, all along 

 the channel between the railroad and suspension bridges, while 

 the big bar at the mouth of the Licking thrusts itself sheer across 

 the river to within a hundred feet of the Ohio edge, at the foot of 

 Walnut Street. One pebbled and coal-strewn reef, between Wal- 

 nut and Vine Streets, is exposed for over two hundred feet, and it 

 can be reached by wading from either shore. A sunken barge, 

 which for years has been concealed from sight by the waters, is 

 now wholly exposed, and its skeleton is visible from keel to gun- 

 wales, and stem to stern." * 



The cause of such fluctuations is not far to seek. The destruc- 

 tion of forests about the head-waters of the tributaries, large and 

 small, prevents the conservation of the water which falls in a 

 rainy season. It rushes in torrents down the denuded hills and 

 mountains, and is gone in a few days. A smaller amount of rain 

 than the average, and the river becomes abnormally low. Abun- 

 dant precipitation, on the other hand, combined with such con- 



* Local paper, October 27, 1887. 



