Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Nine
TAMING THE RIVER
The Ohio River was a watery highway that carried the region's first settlers, their posses-
sions, and livestock downstream. But the Ohio was unpredictable. It frequently flooded, and
in dry weather, it sometimes fell so low people could walk across it. When steamboats re-
placed the river's early flatboats and keelboats, they often had to tie up and wait on a surge
of high water before they could travel. Here steamboats and loaded coal barges await high-
water stage at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
