from the Introduction Charles Henry Ambler, in A History of Transportation in the Ohio Valley (1932), wrote that of all the American rivers, the Ohio stands out as the "beautiful river" from the accounts of French explorers. Describing the Ohio, Ambler stated, "there are grander and more majestic streams, even in America, but there are few anywhere of such graceful loveliness.with its constant successions of curves and gently rounded hills, according in their natural state, with as true a harmony as that of music." He continued: "More important still, the Ohio is the main thoroughfare between the Atlantic coast and the Mississippi valley. By way of its waters, more than any other route, a whole continent was peopled." When I have visited Paducah, Fort Massac at Metropolis, or the confluence of the Ohio with the Mississippi about a mile below the city of Cairo, I often observed wind-driven two- to three-foot-high (or more) rollers with white caps on the Ohio portion of the broad expanse of the merging rivers. Towboats pushing their barge fleets into these rolling swells cause massive, impressive sprays of water over the fronts of the lead barges. It always struck me just how far these rivers had come to merge at this place and just how much water was swiftly moving past, with another 1,000 miles to go before reaching the Gulf of Mexico.

The Ohio River has two primary navigation sections: the 611-mile-long section of the upper Ohio, from Pittsburgh to the Falls of the Ohio at Louisville, Kentucky; and the 370-mile-long section of thelower Ohio, from the Falls at Louisville to its mouth at the Mississippi at Cairo. Ohio River navigation charts begin with mile marker 0.0 at Pittsburgh and end with mile marker 981.0 at the confluence with the Mississippi below Cairo, Illinois. Mile marker 605.3, at the Falls of the Ohio at Louisville, marks the line between the upper and lower Ohio. Towns and cities important to the lower Ohio (in downriver order) include New Albany, Indiana; Owensboro, Kentucky; Evansville, Indiana; Smithland and Paducah, Kentucky; and eventually Metropolis, Mound City, and Cairo, Illinois, at the mouth. Water draining from much of the eastern United States west of the Alleghenies, including West Virginia and much of Kentucky, flows into the Ohio, which then receives water from two important rivers flowing northward out of the South --the Cumberland at Smithland, Kentucky, and the Tennessee at Paducah, Kentucky.

These two rivers drain much of the area south and west of the southern Appalachian Mountains, including the rest of Kentucky, most of Tennessee, and much of northern Georgia and Alabama, into the Ohio River. This region has been the heart of the Tennessee Valley Authority''s hydrology control and hydroelectric energy production since the early 1940s. This much-enlarged flow of the lower Ohio moves downriver past Brookport, Metropolis, and Mound City to Cairo, where the average normal flow rate is 281,000 cubic feet per second moving from the Ohio and entering the Mississippi River at the confluence (called the "Point" by local residents). During flood stage, the maximal flow rate at Cairo could be as much as 1,850,000 cubic feet per second, over six times the average, bringing the water level 30-40 feet above normal pool. Smithland at the mouth of the Cumberland is at mile marker 920.5, which is 315 river miles below the Falls at Louisville. Unique geographically, this 60.5-river-mile-long section of the lower Ohio River, between Smithland and the Ohio''s confluence with the Mississippi just below Cairo, is the common navigable link at the center of the inland waterway system between the Alleghenies and Appalachians to the east and the Rockies to the west and from Canada to the north and the Gulf Coast to the south .

In this book, I refer to this final section of the lower Ohio River as the Four Rivers Reach, or simply the Reach.4 The Tennessee River flows into the Reach at Paducah, Kentucky, and the Cache River flows into the Reach at Mound City. This navigation hub is visible and easy to recognize from high-flying aircraft, on Google Earth, and on regional and river maps as a broad crescent shape stretching from the Ohio''s confluence with the Mississippi through Paducah at the confluence of the Tennessee with the Ohio and ending with Smithland at the confluence of the Cumberland with the Ohio. The Significance of the Four Rivers Reach Inland waterway connections in five directions are made at the confluences of these four major rivers--the Ohio, Cumberland, Tennessee, and Mississippi--at Smithland and Paducah in Kentucky and at Cairo in Illinois. From the upper end of the Reach, a vessel can navigate to Louisville, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh in the upper Ohio River Valley or can travel via the Cumberland to Nashville or via the Tennessee to the western edges of the Appalachians at Chattanooga and Knoxville. At the lower end of the Reach at Cairo, a vessel can navigate all the way down the Mississippi to New Orleans or can head west on the Arkansas River to Little Rock and beyond to Oklahoma. From Cairo a vessel can navigate up the Mississippi to St. Louis and then turn west on the Missouri River toward Kansas City and on into the northwest as far as Montana or can continue northward to Minneapolis on the upper Mississippi and beyond to Canada or bear northeast to Chicago and the Great Lakes via the Illinois River.

The southern edge of the Reach provides access to the Jackson Purchase area of western Kentucky. The northern edge of the Reach provides access to the Little Egypt area of southernmost Illinois. The Reach is bookended by three major river confluences that grant it centrality: the Four Rivers Reach of the lower Ohio River is the common link tying the entire inland waterway system together in the midsection of the United States . [end of excerpt].