"The rivers run through our history and folklore and links us as people. They nourish and refresh us and provide us a home for dazzling varieties of fish and wildlife and trees and plants of every sort. We are a nation rich in rivers."

~Charles Kuralt.

 

The Ohio River got its name from  Seneca tribe of an  Iroquois nation word meaning "the great river." Before the Cherokee settled in Appalachia, before the Civil Rights Act, before Vietnam, Rock and Roll, before the "first small step for man" on the moon, before color television, and air-conditioning was the Ohio River.

 

During the early days, the Ohio River marked the southern boundary of the Northwest Territory of the United States. Before Fiona became the hippopotamus ambassador for the Cincinnati Zoo, the Big Pig gig, and Pete Rose had more hits than any other MLB player in history, and before the Flower Show, the Ohio River connected the "City of Seven Hills" to Covington, KY.

 

Farther down the Ohio are Cannelton and Tell City, Indiana, named for William Tell, expert crossbow marksman known to free Switzerland from a known tyrant by shooting an apple from atop his son’s head

 

The Ohio River is nearly 981 miles long  and is the 10th longest river in the United States. 

 

Before Wide World of Sports came to Madison on Fourth of July weekends to watch Vietnam-era Chinook helicopter engines propel hydroplanes spewing rooster tails, and before steamboat captains liquored up on Kentucky moonshine and challenged each other to races on the Ohio at 10 miles an hour on a good day, people of Madison knew the river was the town’s biggest asset.

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"A river seems a magic thing,  A magic,  moving living part of the very earth itself." 

~Laura Gilpin