22 Facts About Ohio River

1.

Ohio River is sometimes considered as the western extension of the Mason–Dixon Line that divided Pennsylvania from Maryland, and thus part of the border between free and slave territory, and between the Northern and Southern United States or Upper South.

FactSnippet No. 468,319
2.

Ohio River is a climatic transition area, as its water runs along the periphery of the humid subtropical and humid continental climate areas.

FactSnippet No. 468,320
3.

Ohio River had great significance in the history of the Native Americans, as numerous prehistoric and historic civilizations formed along its valley.

FactSnippet No. 468,321
4.

Lord Dunmore's War south of the Ohio river contributed to cession of land north to Quebec to prevent colonial expansion onto Native American territory.

FactSnippet No. 468,322
5.

Ohio River flowed westward, it became a convenient means of westward movement by pioneers traveling from western Pennsylvania.

FactSnippet No. 468,323
6.

The Ohio River boatmen inspired performer Dan Emmett, who in 1843 wrote the song "The Boatman's Dance".

FactSnippet No. 468,324
7.

The need for access to the port of New Orleans by settlers in the Ohio River Valley is one of the factors that led to the United States' Louisiana Purchase in 1803.

FactSnippet No. 468,325
8.

Ohio River's composed the libretto for the opera Margaret Garner, based on the life and trial of an enslaved woman who escaped with her family across the river.

FactSnippet No. 468,326
9.

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.

FactSnippet No. 468,327
10.

Several decades beginning in the 1950s, the Ohio River was polluted with hundreds of thousands of pounds of PFOA, a fluoride-based chemical used in making teflon, among other things, by the DuPont chemical company from an outflow pipe at its Parkersburg, West Virginia, facility.

FactSnippet No. 468,328
11.

Ohio River is formed by the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers at what is Point State Park in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

FactSnippet No. 468,329
12.

Ohio River follows a roughly southwest and then west-northwest course until Cincinnati, before bending to a west-southwest course for most of the remainder of its length.

FactSnippet No. 468,330
13.

Where the Ohio River joins the Mississippi is the lowest elevation in the state of Illinois, at 315 feet.

FactSnippet No. 468,331
14.

Ohio River is a left and the largest tributary by volume of the Mississippi River in the United States.

FactSnippet No. 468,332
15.

At the confluence, the Ohio River is considerably bigger than the Mississippi, measured by long-term mean discharge.

FactSnippet No. 468,333
16.

The Ohio River flow is greater than that of the Mississippi River, so hydrologically the Ohio River is the main stream of the river system.

FactSnippet No. 468,334
17.

Ohio River is a naturally shallow river that was artificially deepened by a series of dams.

FactSnippet No. 468,335
18.

Ohio River is a climatic transition area, as its water runs along the periphery of the humid continental and humid subtropical climate areas.

FactSnippet No. 468,336
19.

The movement of glaciers during the earliest ice ages the contemporary river drainages of the Kanawha, Sandy, Kentucky, Green, Cumberland and Tennessee rivers northward created the Ohio system and the course of early tributaries of the Ohio River, including the Monongahela and the Allegheny rivers, were set.

FactSnippet No. 468,337
20.

Upper Ohio River formed when one of the glacial lakes overflowed into a south-flowing tributary of the Teays River.

FactSnippet No. 468,338
21.

Along the banks of the Ohio are some of the largest cities in their respective states: Pittsburgh, the third largest city on the river and second-largest city in Pennsylvania; Cincinnati, the third-largest city in Ohio; Louisville, the largest city on the river and in Kentucky; Evansville, the third-largest city in Indiana; Owensboro, the fourth-largest city in Kentucky; and three of the five largest cities in West Virginia—Huntington, Parkersburg (fourth), and Wheeling (fifth).

FactSnippet No. 468,339
22.

Ohio River seen at Sciotoville, from the "Geography of Ohio, " 1923.

FactSnippet No. 468,340