Ohio River | Geography, History & Importance (2024)

Ohio River, major river artery of the east-central United States. Formed by the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers at Pittsburgh, it flows northwest out of Pennsylvania, then in a general southwesterly direction to join the Mississippi River at Cairo, Illinois (see photograph), after a course of 981 miles (1,579 km). It marks several state boundaries: the Ohio–West Virginia, Ohio–Kentucky, Indiana–Kentucky, and Illinois–Kentucky. The Ohio River contributes more water to the Mississippi than does any other tributary and drains an area of 203,900 square miles (528,100 square km). The river’s valley is narrow, with an average width of less than 0.5 mile (0.8 km) between Pittsburgh and Wheeling (West Virginia), a little more than 1 mile (1.6 km) from Cincinnati (Ohio) to Louisville (Kentucky) and somewhat greater below Louisville.

The Ohio is navigable, and, despite seasonal fluctuations that occasionally reach flood proportions, its fairly uniform flow has supported important commerce since settlement first began. Following destructive floods at Johnstown, Pennsylvania, in 1889 and Portsmouth, Ohio, in 1937, the federal government built a series of flood-control dams. While not developed for hydropower in Ohio, the river, kept at a navigable depth of 9 feet (3 metres), carries cargoes of coal, oil, steel, and manufactured articles. It has a total fall of only 429 feet (130 metres), the one major hazard to navigation being the Falls of the Ohio at Louisville, where locks control a descent of about 24 feet (7 metres) within a distance of 2.5 miles (4 km).

The Ohio’s tributaries include the Tennessee, Cumberland, Kanawha, Big Sandy, Licking, Kentucky, and Green rivers from the south and the Muskingum, Miami, Wabash, and Scioto rivers from the north. Chief cities along the river, in addition to Pittsburgh, Cairo, Wheeling, and Louisville, are Steubenville, Marietta, Gallipolis, Portsmouth, and Cincinnati in Ohio; Madison, New Albany, Evansville, and Mount Vernon in Indiana; Parkersburg and Huntington in West Virginia; and Ashland, Covington, Owensboro, and Paducah in Kentucky.

René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, is said to have been the first European to see the Ohio, in 1669, and he descended it until obstructed by a waterfall (presumably the Falls at Louisville). In the 1750s the river’s strategic importance (especially the fork at Pittsburgh) in the struggle between the French and the English for possession of the interior of the continent became fully recognized. By the treaty of 1763 ending the French and Indian Wars, the English finally gained undisputed control of the territory along its banks. When (by an ordinance of 1787) the area was opened to settlement, most of the settlers entered the region down the headwaters of the Ohio.