THE ARTHUR H. CLARK COMPANY CLEVELAND, OHIO 1903 COPYRIGHT, 1903 BY The Arthur H. Clark Company ALL RIGHTS RESERVED...

In the study of Waterways of Westward Expansion, the Ohio River—the “Gateway of the West”—occupies such a commanding position that it must be considered most important and most typical. Such is its situation in our geography and history that it is entitled to a most prominent place among Historic Highways of America which greatly influenced the early westward extension of the borders and the people of the United States. Not until a late period in the expansion era—the day of steam navigation—did

The Ohio River is a greater and more important stream than is generally realized. It drains a vast and rich territory; its northern source is in latitude 42° 20´, while its mouth, thirteen hundred miles away, is in latitude 37° north. Its eastern tributaries are in longitude 78°, while its outlet is in longitude 89° 20´. It thus comprises 5° 2´ of latitude and 11° 20´ of longitude. The Ohio drains a greater area than the Mississippi above the mouth of the Missouri; nearly one quarter of the wate

The campaign of General John Forbes in 1758, which ended French rule on the Ohio, gave the Ohio Valley to the English. From this time on, the entire sweep of territory between the Atlantic Ocean and the present Pittsburg may be termed English territory. While England now nominally came into possession of all of this portion of New France, the lands on either side of the Ohio River below Pittsburg were claimed by the Indian nations inhabiting them, and the Crown attempted, in the Proclamation of

As the eighteenth century neared its close the great highways converging upon Pittsburg and its neighboring towns on the Youghiogheny and Monongahela became the routes of the great flood-tide of immigration which in a day filled the Middle West with towns and cities. The emigrant reached navigable waters at Pittsburg, if he came over Forbes’s Road or the Pittsburg Pike; if he followed Braddock’s Road he found himself on navigable waters at Brownsville, or, continuing the land journey, he reached

The evolution of craft on the Ohio River portrays in a remarkable manner the economic development of the Central West. Being the one practicable artery in the empire between the Appalachian uplift and the Mississippi, and the Blue Ridge and the Great Lakes, this river was, from the beginning of the eighteenth century onward, the main route of immigration and commerce, and the story of those years is contained in the story of these craft which carried the freight and fortune of the millions who c

The history of the Ohio Basin rivermen, from those who paddled a canoe and pushed a keel-boat to those who labor today on our steamboats has never been written. The lights and shades of this life have never been pictured by any novelist and perhaps they never can be. Even the student who gleans imperfect pictures from the miscellanies preserved in local histories, must in the very nature of the case, secure but a poor focus on realities. Study as you will, you will only make yourself ridiculous

The neglect of the Ohio River by the United States government cannot be better suggested than by comparing the expenditures on that river with the appropriations for the great land thoroughfare—the Cumberland Road. In thirty-two years (1806-1838) the government spent $6,823,559.52 on the Cumberland Road. In seventy-five years (1827-1902) $6,752,042.04 was appropriated for the Ohio River and much of that was portioned out to the Mississippi, Missouri, and Arkansas. It is impossible to determine w