Falls of the Ohio, KY-IN We do not know the exact date the barge was piloted down the northern channel lined with “dreadful crags” but Thomas Rodney was also there, and he described the falls as a “Terrable place” when the water is low.
Falls of the Ohio
From the sketchbook of Steve Ludeman
© 2023 by Steve Ludeman, www.steveludemanfineart.com. Used by permission.
A “Terrable Place”
The rock that forms the great bed of the Falls is lime stone covered about 2 to 4 inches with a kind of iron stone . . . . [T]he limestone rock lies hard above [its] base about a foot thick and cracks various ways, and being cut to pieces brake of[f] in blocks[s] and great flakes, but are first but into deep holes and sharp and dreadful crags dangerous for vessels to touch . . . . They are a terrable place to pass through when the water is as low as now.
—Thomas Rodney[1]16 and 18 October 1803. Dwight L. Smith and Ray Swick, ed., A Journey Through the West: Thomas Rodney’s 1803 Journal from Delaware to the Mississippi Territory (Athens: Ohio University Press, … Continue reading
Figure 1
Falls of the Ohio, Indiana Shore
Permission via the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license by Censusdata.
Figure 2
Falls of the Ohio
Provided by the U.S. Corps of Engineers.
The Falls Today
Today, the dangers of the rapids at Falls of the Ohio are mitigated by the work of the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers. Figure 1 shows the nature of the “dreadful crags,” the exposed fossil beds viewed from the Falls of the Ohio State Park. Both figures show the 14th Street Bridge which has been rebuilt several times since its original 1870 construction. In Figure 2, the George Rogers Clark Homesite is on the Indiana shore opposite the downstream end of the island.
Notes
| ↑1 | 16 and 18 October 1803. Dwight L. Smith and Ray Swick, ed., A Journey Through the West: Thomas Rodney’s 1803 Journal from Delaware to the Mississippi Territory (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1997), 122–23, 125. |
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