A Geographic Interpretation of Cincinnati, Ohio 3 
1000 feet front. The shore is paved from low-water mark^ and 
furnished with floating wharves, which rise and fall with the 
river. Cincinnati is bounded on the south by the river, and on 
the north, east and west by hills, 300 to 400 feet high, which form 
the walls of an amphitheatre, with the business section of the city 
lying at their base, situated on a series of terraces. 
Location central in the Ohio Valley. Cincinnati is central to 
the Ohio Valley. Pittsburg, where the Ohio Piver is formed by 
the junction of the Monongahela and the Allegheny, is 960 miles 
from the Mississippi Eiver ; the distance from Pittsburg to Cincin- 
nati is 458 miles. Lake Erie is 500 miles from the sources of the 
Kanawha and the Tennessee; Cincinnati is about half-way 
between, and almost on the line. The principal tributaries of 
the Ohio are the Muskingum, Great Kanawha, Big Sandy, 
Scioto, Miami, Green, Kentucky, Wabash, Cumberland and 
Tennessee Rivers. About 210,000 square miles are drained by 
the Ohio and its tributaries, and Cincinnati holds the strategic 
position in this region. 
Connections with the East. The city is connected by navigable 
rivers and by railroads with the ocean and with the interior river 
coast. Of the great railroad lines which cross the passes of the 
Appalachians, all except the direct lines of the New York Central 
pass through Cincinnati. The Norfolk and Western, the Chesa- 
peake and Ohio, the Baltimore and Ohio, and the Pennsylvania 
connect Cincinnati with the East. 
Geographical boundaries of Cincinnati. Geographically speak- 
ing, Cincinnati includes miore than the limits of the city, since 
Cincinnati occupies only a part of the wide valley of a former 
mature river. The older portion of the city, nearest the river, is 
a depressed area, 300 feet below the general level of the country, 
somewhat semi-circular in shape, bounded as stated above. A 
smaller half-basin, similar in shape, is occupied by Covington 
and Newport, Ky., towns lying just across the river from Cincin- 
nati, this half-basin being intersected by the Licking River and 
semi-circled by hills. In a very remote period, the Walnut Hills 
area, one of Cincinnati’s eastern hilltop suburbs, was directly 
connected with the Kentucky highlands, lying east of Newport. 
The Price Hill area, a western hilltop suburb of Cincinnati, was 
connected with the south-lying hills of Kentucky. The Licking 
River then flowed northward toward Hamilton. These hills 
